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A review by sarahrosebooks
Dance in Shadow and Whisper by Sarah Godfrey, Victoria DeRubeis
3.0
This is a strange book. I wasn't sure how to rate it, as I did enjoy reading it. In the end I decided on three stars, as a few things irritated me enough that I feel the need to mention them here.
The first few chapters had me rolling my eyes almost constantly. Oh, the kooky wannabe teenager who isn't human and the other fake teenager who also isn't human, and oh they have weird names. Where have I seen this before? It's easy to fall into that trap of thinking this is just another young adult book, but it isn't! Get past the first few irritating school chapters and the characters start to open up and the plot gets a whole lot more interesting.
The other thing that annoyed me were the instances where characters swore profusely. I can't write it in this review, but I find an overload of swearing deeply irritating, especially where you are faced a whole sentence of "f-words". Maybe I'm getting old, but surely youngsters don't talk like this really?
I also figured out the plot twist well before it happened, so I wasn't as surprised as I like to be when reading, but I'm not as bothered by this as I would normally be as I enjoyed the story anyway.
The final thing that knocked this down to three stars was the switching view points. I would have been happy to follow Kali all the way through this book in her first person narrative, but then it would suddenly change from chapter to chapter to another character, and it did get confusing sometimes trying to figure out which character it was, especially as they all have odd names that can be difficult to remember. In the last section of the book there was a chapter where the viewpoint seemed to change constantly, and I read this wondering who the hell I was supposed to be following at that point. I finally figured out who it was, but I don't like having to wonder about these things, and switching viewpoints has always been something I find irritating.
Now for the good points! The plot was interesting. You might be sick of hearing about vampires and demons, but the authors really do give this overdone genre a bit of an overhaul and a new twist with their mythology. I like where the story went, despite the ending being very much one of those "READ THE NEXT BOOK TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS OH MY GOD CLIFFHANGER" endings. Although some characters were a bit flat (such as nearly every vampire except Yuuhi), I liked the ones we spent more time with (Kali, Yuuhi, Jason, Toivo, Carmi). Though the plot was guessable in parts, I enjoyed following it, and although the viewpoints switched around, I liked Kali's first person narrative.
All in all I gave this three stars, and I would recommend this, especially if you read the more recently released edition, which I believe the authors have edited further to fix a few errors (I noticed some spelling and grammar errors in my kindle edition, but these were only minor).
I will definitely be getting the next two books in the series.
The first few chapters had me rolling my eyes almost constantly. Oh, the kooky wannabe teenager who isn't human and the other fake teenager who also isn't human, and oh they have weird names. Where have I seen this before? It's easy to fall into that trap of thinking this is just another young adult book, but it isn't! Get past the first few irritating school chapters and the characters start to open up and the plot gets a whole lot more interesting.
The other thing that annoyed me were the instances where characters swore profusely. I can't write it in this review, but I find an overload of swearing deeply irritating, especially where you are faced a whole sentence of "f-words". Maybe I'm getting old, but surely youngsters don't talk like this really?
I also figured out the plot twist well before it happened, so I wasn't as surprised as I like to be when reading, but I'm not as bothered by this as I would normally be as I enjoyed the story anyway.
The final thing that knocked this down to three stars was the switching view points. I would have been happy to follow Kali all the way through this book in her first person narrative, but then it would suddenly change from chapter to chapter to another character, and it did get confusing sometimes trying to figure out which character it was, especially as they all have odd names that can be difficult to remember. In the last section of the book there was a chapter where the viewpoint seemed to change constantly, and I read this wondering who the hell I was supposed to be following at that point. I finally figured out who it was, but I don't like having to wonder about these things, and switching viewpoints has always been something I find irritating.
Now for the good points! The plot was interesting. You might be sick of hearing about vampires and demons, but the authors really do give this overdone genre a bit of an overhaul and a new twist with their mythology. I like where the story went, despite the ending being very much one of those "READ THE NEXT BOOK TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS OH MY GOD CLIFFHANGER" endings. Although some characters were a bit flat (such as nearly every vampire except Yuuhi), I liked the ones we spent more time with (Kali, Yuuhi, Jason, Toivo, Carmi). Though the plot was guessable in parts, I enjoyed following it, and although the viewpoints switched around, I liked Kali's first person narrative.
All in all I gave this three stars, and I would recommend this, especially if you read the more recently released edition, which I believe the authors have edited further to fix a few errors (I noticed some spelling and grammar errors in my kindle edition, but these were only minor).
I will definitely be getting the next two books in the series.