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A review by islandgeekgirl
Twisted Fate by Norah Olson
2.0
When Graham's family moves next door to Alyson's, she feels an instant connection to the shy, awkward boy. To her, he's a sweet boy and she's falling in love with him. To Alyson's sister Sydney, Graham's weird, creepy, and something about him scream 'danger'. Sydney is determined to save her sister from him. But part of Sydney is drawn to Graham too. And the more Sydney gets to know him, the more she finds out how right, and how wrong, she is about everything.
Twisted Fate was told from multiple POVs, most of them being the three main characters of Sydney, Alyson, and Graham. The other POVs were random, Sydney's best friend or Graham's step-mother, a police officer, all character the reader never spent much time with so it felt like they were more of an insert POV to show or tell us something seemingly important. With the book being on the shorter side, all the extra POVs took time away from fleshing out the main characters of Syd, Ally, and Graham so they felt a little shallow.
There seemed to be a lot of telling in the book instead of letting the reader feel or discover things for themselves. Sydney was supposedly a genius but we never got to see that. Instead we were told all the time that she got great grades and that she was so smart because she read books and knew big words. She was supposedly a trouble-maker which we saw by her skipping school and smoking pot but that was it. There was very little details mentioned about the character's passions: skateboarding, computer hacking, making and editing film, baking. There would occasionally be a mention thrown in like 'coding' or 'Tony Hawk' but it ended up coming across more like something the characters did in their spare time than something they loved to do.
What did work for me was Graham and his whole creepy film guy plot. He definitely did creep me out. Maybe I watch too many Criminal Minds-type shows, maybe I scare too easily, but the idea of Graham and his films was more than unsettling. His mysterious past and his whole storyline kept me reading. I wanted to know how things would turn out for him, even if I did suspect.
There was a lot of foreshadowing in the book(or I just read way too much into meaningless things because of above-mentioned Criminal Minds addiction) so I was able to determined the twists fairly early into the book. They still kept me reading because I wanted to know if I was right but it was a little disappointing things did turn out pretty much as I expected. The concept was what drew me to the book and I still think it was a great idea.
Overall, I feel I would have enjoyed the book if there had been less foreshadowing(so I would have been surprised by the twists) and more character depth.
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Twisted Fate was told from multiple POVs, most of them being the three main characters of Sydney, Alyson, and Graham. The other POVs were random, Sydney's best friend or Graham's step-mother, a police officer, all character the reader never spent much time with so it felt like they were more of an insert POV to show or tell us something seemingly important. With the book being on the shorter side, all the extra POVs took time away from fleshing out the main characters of Syd, Ally, and Graham so they felt a little shallow.
There seemed to be a lot of telling in the book instead of letting the reader feel or discover things for themselves. Sydney was supposedly a genius but we never got to see that. Instead we were told all the time that she got great grades and that she was so smart because she read books and knew big words. She was supposedly a trouble-maker which we saw by her skipping school and smoking pot but that was it. There was very little details mentioned about the character's passions: skateboarding, computer hacking, making and editing film, baking. There would occasionally be a mention thrown in like 'coding' or 'Tony Hawk' but it ended up coming across more like something the characters did in their spare time than something they loved to do.
What did work for me was Graham and his whole creepy film guy plot. He definitely did creep me out. Maybe I watch too many Criminal Minds-type shows, maybe I scare too easily, but the idea of Graham and his films was more than unsettling. His mysterious past and his whole storyline kept me reading. I wanted to know how things would turn out for him, even if I did suspect.
There was a lot of foreshadowing in the book(or I just read way too much into meaningless things because of above-mentioned Criminal Minds addiction) so I was able to determined the twists fairly early into the book. They still kept me reading because I wanted to know if I was right but it was a little disappointing things did turn out pretty much as I expected. The concept was what drew me to the book and I still think it was a great idea.
Overall, I feel I would have enjoyed the book if there had been less foreshadowing(so I would have been surprised by the twists) and more character depth.
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.