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lucy_rain_and_cupcakes 's review for:
Fake
by C.L. Stone
Although this all started out because Corey, in actuality Corey (or any of the boys) was hardly in the book. Then when Corey was brought up to date, it took him very little effort to solved the problem. Which make me wonder, if Kayli and the boys have told Corey the whole truth from the beginning, perhaps less people would be injured, kidnapped, and Kayli weren't need to spend the entire book running around in circle.
Normally I love how long the book of the series were, however since Fake has focused entirely on the mystery solving, which could've been an interesting story, except I've thought it was overloaded with unessential information, which made this book seem long and dull. To be honest, I couldn't quite connect with the story, and didn't particularly enjoyed this book as much as the previous two. In the end, I thought Fake pretty much has a repeating theme as Thief, where Kayli running around trying to solve the mystery and saving the academy boys. She also brought back Blake, and honestly that was the better part of the book.
This book has left me with many questions, like how did the bad guys managed to break into the apartment, snatched two people without anyone notice and got away with it. And why didn't the academy boys worked as a team when Kayli escaped. I thought their reasons seem weak and illogical to me, and it goes against everything the Academy supposedly stands for, to always work as a team.
In a way Kayli seem to have an incredible good luck, as well as more resourceful than the academy boys. After escaping from her kidnappers, Kayli have managed to find a cab driver that happened to be one of her old classmate, whom helped Kayli unconditionally throughout the book. While in the most part of the book, the academy boys didn't do much to help at all. Which bring me to another question, in Fake, the boys seem lost, unorganized and was frankly a disappointment. Rather focus more on the boys, the book has introduced a new character (Kayli's old classmate), and brought back Blake and his tech guy, whom by the way showed more character than the boys in Fake. Whatever happened to the Academy boys that I love to read about? And how on earth did the bad guys managed to get away with roomful of Academy's people? I have no clue.
At book number three of the series, I am still unsure about Kayli, she is flaky, contradicted, and plain annoying. Once again she spend the entire book undecided what she should do with the boys. Sure, she'll trust Blake, but when it comes to to the boys, she'll question everything. Which was pretty much the same thing she did in the last book, so nothing changed.
Overall, I didn't think the series advance much if at all after this book, there were no major story progress, and the lack of character and relationship building were a major setback. I also failed to see how the events took place in this book connect to the series as a whole. I was mostly disappointed to see there were very little interactions between Kayli and the academy boys. I thought this book was lacking the most important element of the series, the academy boys.
Base on Thief and Fake, I feel The Scarab Beetle series are focus more solely on Kayli, where the academy boys seem to fade into the background. At this point I am still undecided how I feel about the series, I might read the next book, only because I want to read more about the boys. But I am hoping to see a better balance on the actions, and the character buildings in the next book of the series.
Happy Reading!! XO