Reviews

Abandon by Meg Cabot

mamap's review

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2.0

cute, light-hearted, and juvenile. best read only when in the mood.

petitecourtney's review

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1.0

Can we end the Persephone/Hades trope where the Hades figure is hundreds or thousands of years old, and Persephone is like 15. Or at least acknowledge and justify the power difference?

kp_khera's review

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4.0

It was okay. I read it in about a day and I vaguely remember what it was about. I look forward to finding the sequel to read it as well.

yazgbooks's review against another edition

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5.0

Perfect read 5 stars!

I loved this so much, I loved reading about Pierce and all the troubles revolving around her. I can't wait to read Underworld!!!

thedistortedbliss's review

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3.0

For some reason I did not post a review O.o so I am just gonna paste my short book report I did last year lol it's not the best and this is definitely not how I usually do my reviews but I am to lazy to write one! I did love this book! I love john and his hmmmm possessiveness ;)

Abandon by Meg Cabot is an intricate and heart pounding love story between a beautiful young girl and a handsome young man. The young man, John, is not only alluring, muscular, and ravishing; he is also the lord of the underworld, the in between of Heaven and Hell. His only job is to send the souls on a boat that embarks them on their final journey. Pierce, the plain but gorgeous young girl, is only sixteen when she is sent to the underworld. When she was in the cemetery as a little girl she saw John bring a bird back to life. She remembered him and he remembered her, but instead of sending her off to Heaven he kept her in the underworld. The story gets more intense when she escapes. No one leaves or else the fates, also known as furies, will come after you. Throughout the adventure of twists and turns she finds herself falling for John. In the end it leaves you with a cliff hanger. John brought Pierce back to the underworld and made it very clear that she was never leaving!

katiebookqueen's review

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4.0

I've loved reading Meg Cabot's books for years so I knew I was going to like Abandon. I loved the re-telling of The Myth of Persephone and I really liked the story going from Pierce's present to her past. The relationship between Pierce and John is quite dark and I liked that throughout the book you are kept guessing as to what has gone on between them in the past. I can't wait for the sequel!

chocolatequeen's review

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2.0

It's been a long time since I finished a book that disappointed me this much. Usually if I don't like it, I stop reading... but so many people I trust raved about this book. I kept going, but in the end, I just didn't like it.

Pierce was hard to connect to, partly because she's still so disconnected from everyone due to the whole dying and coming back to life thing. She's also... well, a little vapid. She's living a Greek myth and she doesn't know who Homer is? I would have enjoyed the book a lot more if her NDE had inspired her to do her own research. It also would have eliminated the need for much of the exposition, since she would have discovered things on her own.

Then there's the structure of the book. The book starts when she's 17 and has just moved, two years after almost dying. However, the story really starts back when she's 15. By the end of the book you realize that everything you saw in flashbacks--of which there were A LOT--was really crucial to the plot and deserved to actually be shown, rather than told via flashback.

I think the whole telling vs showing thing is a large part of the problem with the book, actually. We're told John loves Pierce, but we never see that. We're told about what happened in the past, but we don't see it.

Over all, I don't recommend this book.

paigeypng's review

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4.0

I liked this book, but it was pretty confusing. You have to be like totally invested in it while you're reading or you'll miss out on stuff. It explains a lot of the unanswered questions while you read it, so it doesn't get boring!
Can't wait to read the second one!

aplatt23's review

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1.0

I was going to give this book three stars because I thought it was stupid and Pierce was whiny but it wasn't awful or anything. But the romance was creepy and toxic and there was only the barest hint of a climax. Which I think was meant to be a cliffhanger for the next book in the series but that only works if people are invested in the story in the first place. I will not be reading the rest of this series.

Also, the story never seems to want to just tell you a scene straight. As soon as something vaguely interesting (and I say vaguely because nothing very interesting ever happens) we cut to a scene in the future and then get told what happened in a flashback. There's literally no reason for this. It does nothing for the book but make it more confusing and choppy. Also, a pet peeve of mine that continue to pop up through the book is when authors use hyphens - like this, if you know what I mean - and then proceed to put way too much in the middle so you forget what the beginning of the sentence was. There would be two or three sentences in the middle of the sentence.

And the whole Persephone thing was barely relevant. First of all, unless the author is good at weaving the stories together, I hate when supposed retellings acknowledge the story they're supposed to be in. What I mean by that is the Persephone myth exists as a myth in Pierce's universe, but it makes the story weaker, not stronger. Pierce herself has basically nothing to do with Persephone, besides being John's consort. And, possibly in an attempt to make the romance less creepy, John has basically nothing to do with Hades. Well, the romance is still creepy AND the story is weaker and makes less sense so I guess that failed all around. Kind of like the rest of this book. I love Meg Cabot's other work but I think her foray into retellings was a mistake.

natlvsbooks's review

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2.0

This book was so very frustrating! I usually don't mind when the plot goes back in forth between the present and something that happened in the past. But...this one kept alluding to things that happened and wouldn't reveal them. It felt like it should have been the 2nd book in a trilogy instead of the 1st. The plot was awkward and clunky.