Scan barcode
A review by ravencrantz
Nightstruck by Jenna Black
3.0
2.5/5
I was rather discouraged when I went to add this to goodreads and saw its rating, and the first half of the book dragged a lot. It did start out strong enough, with our main character finding a "baby" abandoned in an alley at night and then all hell breaking loose, but it took so long for people to piece things together. While that may be realistic, it meant I had to sit through our main character doing nothing more than swooning over her crush and best friends boyfriend, and going to parties she had no interest in. The first half was a lot of contemporary YA with hints that something more was happening, and that was incredibly boring for me. Not to mention it was a good fifty pages before we even learned our main character's name was Becket.
I tried to like Piper, both as a friend and an antagonist, but she was so awful and so predictable. I hated how she bossed everyone around and manipulated them into doing what she wanted. I hated how Becket didn't stand up for herself, though I do understand that's a hard thing to do. I didn't like the YA trope of every tiny thing Becket did getting blown out of proportion by a parent and resulting in unfair grounding. The first half of this book was a huge mess and should have been reworked to better accommodate the second half.
The second half, though, oh man. I can't believe this was the same book. Though I wasn't a huge fan of the italics with what was happening outside of Becket's viewpoint, I appreciate how bloody and gross this book was. Heads chopped off, blood everywhere, faces kicked in, this was my kind of book. It was corny and gross and reminded me of a terrible horror movie and I loved every second of it. It still had issues with annoying tropes (oh no I, a Girl, and you, a Boy, and being forced to share a house alone at night how Awkward I hope nothing Romantic happens), and was still predictable, but it was written so much better. It moved faster, it had more action, and was simply more fun to read.
This did leave on a cliffhanger and I'm kind of bummed about that. A bit of reworking and this could have been a brilliant standalone novel, but I can't say I'm not interested in the sequel. My main problem with the ending was nothing was explained. We don't know what all of this is about and the term Nightstruck was thrown into the text as if we already knew what that meant. I feel like I'm missing something with this book that I hope will be fixed in the sequel. Definitely read this if you like dumb, bloody books, but be prepared to work for it.
I was rather discouraged when I went to add this to goodreads and saw its rating, and the first half of the book dragged a lot. It did start out strong enough, with our main character finding a "baby" abandoned in an alley at night and then all hell breaking loose, but it took so long for people to piece things together. While that may be realistic, it meant I had to sit through our main character doing nothing more than swooning over her crush and best friends boyfriend, and going to parties she had no interest in. The first half was a lot of contemporary YA with hints that something more was happening, and that was incredibly boring for me. Not to mention it was a good fifty pages before we even learned our main character's name was Becket.
I tried to like Piper, both as a friend and an antagonist, but she was so awful and so predictable. I hated how she bossed everyone around and manipulated them into doing what she wanted. I hated how Becket didn't stand up for herself, though I do understand that's a hard thing to do. I didn't like the YA trope of every tiny thing Becket did getting blown out of proportion by a parent and resulting in unfair grounding. The first half of this book was a huge mess and should have been reworked to better accommodate the second half.
The second half, though, oh man. I can't believe this was the same book. Though I wasn't a huge fan of the italics with what was happening outside of Becket's viewpoint, I appreciate how bloody and gross this book was. Heads chopped off, blood everywhere, faces kicked in, this was my kind of book. It was corny and gross and reminded me of a terrible horror movie and I loved every second of it. It still had issues with annoying tropes (oh no I, a Girl, and you, a Boy, and being forced to share a house alone at night how Awkward I hope nothing Romantic happens), and was still predictable, but it was written so much better. It moved faster, it had more action, and was simply more fun to read.
This did leave on a cliffhanger and I'm kind of bummed about that. A bit of reworking and this could have been a brilliant standalone novel, but I can't say I'm not interested in the sequel. My main problem with the ending was nothing was explained. We don't know what all of this is about and the term Nightstruck was thrown into the text as if we already knew what that meant. I feel like I'm missing something with this book that I hope will be fixed in the sequel. Definitely read this if you like dumb, bloody books, but be prepared to work for it.