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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
This is the first book in The Marked series, following our heroine, Jemma.
When Jemma's dad dies at the hands of a vampire, everyone thinks she's crazy. She goes to live with her uncle in Hollow Hills, and starts school at the local private high school where all the teenage drama ensues!
We've got:
✔ The cute, sexy boy that wants nothing to do with her
✔ The bitchy ex-girlfriend that makes her life a living hell
✔ The mysterious, older blond guy that seems to have his eye set on her
✔ And a whole lot of secrets that leave Jemma confused and hungry to know the truth
✔ Oh yeah! And we've got vampires, death, and the end of the world!
There are currently 7 books in the series, with the 8th due to come out soon. It was a page turner for sure, and I consumed each book like cheerios for breakfast!
I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys paranormal romance. This is definitely a new adult novel/series with teenage sex and very steamy romance scenes, so I do not recommend this for young adults.
When Jemma's dad dies at the hands of a vampire, everyone thinks she's crazy. She goes to live with her uncle in Hollow Hills, and starts school at the local private high school where all the teenage drama ensues!
We've got:
✔ The cute, sexy boy that wants nothing to do with her
✔ The bitchy ex-girlfriend that makes her life a living hell
✔ The mysterious, older blond guy that seems to have his eye set on her
✔ And a whole lot of secrets that leave Jemma confused and hungry to know the truth
✔ Oh yeah! And we've got vampires, death, and the end of the world!
There are currently 7 books in the series, with the 8th due to come out soon. It was a page turner for sure, and I consumed each book like cheerios for breakfast!
I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys paranormal romance. This is definitely a new adult novel/series with teenage sex and very steamy romance scenes, so I do not recommend this for young adults.
I loved this different take on angels and vampires. Completely intriguing!
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
I really enjoyed the book at first. There were a lot of surprises and twists that happened throughout the book, however I couldn't get over how stubborn both leads were. I was looking for a heartfelt and kickers romance but that didn't happen. Trace manipulated Jemma into believing her cared about her but in reality just wanted the necklace. Jemma should have been more cautious considering she knew that his dead sister was trying to find it in order to save himself, he might have been bitter about Jemma having it and also he jeopardizing to be her keeper. Which should have been a red flag. It seems as if everyone is out to be against her and it's frustrating, by the end I wasn't even sure if I wanted to read the second book.
I'm going to preface my review with this: I love books, and don't like to attack them. I know how much work goes into them, and how much love. Sometimes. I know people get angry about reviewers leaving unfavourable comments on their favourite books, so I'll be as objective and constructive as possible.
I picked this book up because of the premise. It was pitched well on amazon and kept coming up in my suggestions so I was like, what the hell, I like me a trashy Paranormal YA. "Maybe it won't be so bad and will have some decent content," I wondered, much like the many times Jemma did rather than using asked or questioned, because that would require a modicum of decent writing.
Here are the things about this book that I enjoyed/liked/were genuinely good:
1. I listened to this on my jogs so it forced me to hurry the hell up so I could stop listening.
2. I hatched a lot of Pokemon eggs because of that
Now, here are the things about this book that have earned my 1 star (if I could give less, I would) rating.
This novel is essentially an OOC mashup fanfic of Twilight/Buffy/other YA novels. It wasn't very well thought out. Its sloppily written, with a lot of nonsensical flowery prose, confused tense, two dimensional characters (I literally liked no one) and read as a bored housewives attempt at writing to feel good about herself and her mundane life. Which, everyone needs outlets. They just normally don't charge people money for their lackluster narcissistic jerk off. Man, if people though Bella Swan was a Mary Sue, Jemma is something else. Aside from being vaguely described as pretty and a little like dear author, she has no personality, no distinguishing features. She spent the whole book running from guy to guy (There were like, five different guys she mentioned hooking up with/wanting to??) and honestly that took up all her time. Also, remarkable at her lack of PTSD or any adverse problems to, I don't know, watching her father die at the hands of a murderous vampire and then being condemned to an institute? Then she spends the whole book questioning EVERYTHING and sounding so stupid and vapid, but totally waves off her remaining family doing these things to her. Right.
More of this book is taken up talking about the sapphire pools that are Trace's eyes than in the entire Twilight Saga. That in itself is a feat, I have to admit. Along with Trace's jaw ticing near constantly (I don't mean to sound rude, but I genuinely wondered if he was having seizures or something for his jaw muscles to spasm so much). The minute pieces of plot revolved around all these hot dudes getting into fights, btw.
Then we have the grammar. "Blinked into him", "stammered backwards", and really cringey alliteration were a few of the things that happened a lot into this book. If someone had told me that a computer program had written this, I might be impressed. But the sheer ABUSE of the English language/grammar was appalling. I've seen literal thirteen year olds create better pieces of prose.
Every character served as a background piece to Jemma's uselessness and honestly were interchangeable. Her alleged bestie (who she BARELY spends time with) is back seat to whatever hot boy of the day it is, to the point that she doesn't even apologise for blowing her off to go make out with ANOTHER dude. Then we have Nicki, the only other name I remember, because she was a heinous bitch for no reason??? Also, just quickly- if you're gonna rip off Twilight, at least be creative about how you do it. The stupid sitting down in the restaurant scene where vampire dude doesn't eat etc were so cringe I had to slip my headphones off and actually hope no one heard me listening to this garbage.
There are a lot of other points I wanted to raise/comment on but the reviews that I read that aren't "Omg THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVAAAAAAA OMG HAWT DUUUUUDES" cover my points sufficiently and often better than I have here. I also want to stop this review before it turns into a straight up bashing, because I'm 100% furious I wasted 14 hours reading this. Which, by the way, one last point- what was WRONG with the narrator???
"Don't shelf your book, and essentially your dream, because some self-appointed gatekeeper said no to you."- Bianca Scardoni. I include this quote because in my little google search of her, this really stuck out at me. Like really, really stuck out. There's a reason why agents, publishers, and editors exist. There's a reason it's called the publishing industry. They don't just arbitrarily decide that they Know Everything. Even if you self publish, always always ALWAYS go to an editor. It's books like this one that, rather sadly, leave a bad taste in people's mouths re: indie books. Love yourself a little authors. Love your work enough to do it justice. Take a class, or even occasionally go outside and see how people actually act, read a book on grammar or a thesaurus. Hint: the author should have done all of these, and more.
I picked this book up because of the premise. It was pitched well on amazon and kept coming up in my suggestions so I was like, what the hell, I like me a trashy Paranormal YA. "Maybe it won't be so bad and will have some decent content," I wondered, much like the many times Jemma did rather than using asked or questioned, because that would require a modicum of decent writing.
Here are the things about this book that I enjoyed/liked/were genuinely good:
1. I listened to this on my jogs so it forced me to hurry the hell up so I could stop listening.
2. I hatched a lot of Pokemon eggs because of that
Now, here are the things about this book that have earned my 1 star (if I could give less, I would) rating.
This novel is essentially an OOC mashup fanfic of Twilight/Buffy/other YA novels. It wasn't very well thought out. Its sloppily written, with a lot of nonsensical flowery prose, confused tense, two dimensional characters (I literally liked no one) and read as a bored housewives attempt at writing to feel good about herself and her mundane life. Which, everyone needs outlets. They just normally don't charge people money for their lackluster narcissistic jerk off. Man, if people though Bella Swan was a Mary Sue, Jemma is something else. Aside from being vaguely described as pretty and a little like dear author, she has no personality, no distinguishing features. She spent the whole book running from guy to guy (There were like, five different guys she mentioned hooking up with/wanting to??) and honestly that took up all her time. Also, remarkable at her lack of PTSD or any adverse problems to, I don't know, watching her father die at the hands of a murderous vampire and then being condemned to an institute? Then she spends the whole book questioning EVERYTHING and sounding so stupid and vapid, but totally waves off her remaining family doing these things to her. Right.
More of this book is taken up talking about the sapphire pools that are Trace's eyes than in the entire Twilight Saga. That in itself is a feat, I have to admit. Along with Trace's jaw ticing near constantly (I don't mean to sound rude, but I genuinely wondered if he was having seizures or something for his jaw muscles to spasm so much). The minute pieces of plot revolved around all these hot dudes getting into fights, btw.
Then we have the grammar. "Blinked into him", "stammered backwards", and really cringey alliteration were a few of the things that happened a lot into this book. If someone had told me that a computer program had written this, I might be impressed. But the sheer ABUSE of the English language/grammar was appalling. I've seen literal thirteen year olds create better pieces of prose.
Every character served as a background piece to Jemma's uselessness and honestly were interchangeable. Her alleged bestie (who she BARELY spends time with) is back seat to whatever hot boy of the day it is, to the point that she doesn't even apologise for blowing her off to go make out with ANOTHER dude. Then we have Nicki, the only other name I remember, because she was a heinous bitch for no reason??? Also, just quickly- if you're gonna rip off Twilight, at least be creative about how you do it. The stupid sitting down in the restaurant scene where vampire dude doesn't eat etc were so cringe I had to slip my headphones off and actually hope no one heard me listening to this garbage.
There are a lot of other points I wanted to raise/comment on but the reviews that I read that aren't "Omg THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVAAAAAAA OMG HAWT DUUUUUDES" cover my points sufficiently and often better than I have here. I also want to stop this review before it turns into a straight up bashing, because I'm 100% furious I wasted 14 hours reading this. Which, by the way, one last point- what was WRONG with the narrator???
"Don't shelf your book, and essentially your dream, because some self-appointed gatekeeper said no to you."- Bianca Scardoni. I include this quote because in my little google search of her, this really stuck out at me. Like really, really stuck out. There's a reason why agents, publishers, and editors exist. There's a reason it's called the publishing industry. They don't just arbitrarily decide that they Know Everything. Even if you self publish, always always ALWAYS go to an editor. It's books like this one that, rather sadly, leave a bad taste in people's mouths re: indie books. Love yourself a little authors. Love your work enough to do it justice. Take a class, or even occasionally go outside and see how people actually act, read a book on grammar or a thesaurus. Hint: the author should have done all of these, and more.
This was 3.4 stars for me and I don’t even know why but I’m going to read the next book. Not sure if I’m going to read the whole series though.
I love the cover.
The description isn't that great.
I hate how dramatic and how this is written really for people a lot younger than me.
I have moved on to the next book but its already boring me...
Oh and there IS a love triangle. Beware.
The description isn't that great.
I hate how dramatic and how this is written really for people a lot younger than me.
I have moved on to the next book but its already boring me...
Oh and there IS a love triangle. Beware.
There are many plot holes, but I guess that adds to the allure. I'm not really a fan of Jemma + Trace as much as I am of all the secondary characters. The world building is fascinating and I definitely want to see how it unfolds.