Monday, May 26, 2014

Review: The Wanderers

The Wanderers was generously given to me in exchange for an honest review.  While the story may still need a bit of polish, I still found myself reading it in one day, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to finish.

Synopsis from Amazon:
What do you do when you learn your family is the one who's holding all the secrets. Secrets that could get you killed... 
Ella is looking forward to starting college in the fall with her best friend Josie. She’s looking for a place where she can get away from her overbearing parents and two older annoying brothers. Unfortunately Ella realizes that sometimes the past comes back to haunt you. 
Ella soon learns that the man who terrorizes her dreams is in fact real and coming after her. 
When one of her classmates is murdered, Ella slowly recognizes this is not some strange coincidence. Ella fears that the boy she’s falling in love with is the one who stalks her dreams and no longer knows who she can trust. 
When she finally learns the truth of her families deepest secret, Ella has to face her demons by taking out one of the people she thought she could trust…before they kill her.


My Review:
Ella, the main character in the story, is a teenager who has had to deal with way too much grief for someone her age.  You can empathize with her from the start but also hope that she is able to get past it. She makes some lousy decisions in the story that will make you angry but thankfully, she always comes through in the end.  Tristan is your typical gorgeous college student who is completely incorrigible, to the point where I didn't even like him at some points in the story.  He seemed too much of a playboy to be swoon worthy. However, as I began to piece things together toward the end, I realized that what I thought was happening wasn't really the case.  Even though all of my questions weren't answered about him, I have some pretty good hunches about why he acted the way he did.  By the end, I was also enamored by him and hoping he and Ella would find happiness together.  Jack started out as a good friend but I knew something was wrong with him from the start.  I just couldn't place my finger on what it was but he was just off in some way that made me suspicious.

What I found quite interesting about the story was that there was really no major paranormal element to it until about halfway through.  I wasn't sure if we would be dealing with witches, vampires, werewolves, or what. There were little clues here and there, and Ella's dreams of course, but the big reveal didn't happen for a long time.  I kind of liked it this way. Not only did it keep me reading to see if my predictions were correct, but I didn't feel like the romance or plot was rushed in any way.  Once everything was finally out in the open however, the action really picked up and the ending was, well... let's just say I need the next book now.

Fans of YA paranormal will like this story.  When I mentioned earlier that it could use a little bit of polish, that just means that there were a few editing issues and I still have a lot of burning questions that need to be addressed.  I'm hoping that these questions will be answered in the next book.  Give this one a chance.  I think you will enjoy it.
                                                                                                                                            

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