One final thing: You'll probably notice I didn't use the girl's name. The reason behind that is not some subliminal message or something. The fact of the matter is I simply forgot. And I only read this book two days ago. I guess I really was bored. Oh well. At least it was free.
As the seventh child of parents who themselves were the seventh children, she was expected to wield great magic and was treated badly when it seemed she would not live up to her potential. Eventually she is found and forced to return home, coerced into a deal that compromises her spirit, and threatens her life.
I liked the bones of the premise and there are some really interesting concepts at play yet the story has the appropriate simplicity for a mature young adult audience. There are some dark undertones but also some positive messages and Hex faces issues teenagers can easily relate to. I hope the author exploits the potential of this network in further installments. Hex is likeable, with an admirable determination and inner strength.
Despite the intense pressure and bullying she has experienced she is determined to hold onto her own core values. She defends her friends even at great risk to herself. Her relationship with both evolves quite naturally and Zach provides the touch of forbidden romance that is de riguer in a YA novel.
Cynthie is the mean girl whose hatred of Hex is twisted by unacknowledged jealousy and I thought she she was probably the best actualised character with the strongest motivation for her actions.
Wayward has some weaknesses but overall it is a promising first effort from a young writer and I believe the series has the potential to improve as the author gains experience in the craft.
If you are a fan of paranormal YA then Wayward, available at the bargain price of 99c, is a risk worth taking. It was such a great read that I seriously could not put down for the life of me.
It certainly left me shell-shocked at times with how dramatic it was and how easily I was hooked to the plot. I loved the main character in this one. She was a real bad girl but at the same time she had her open, vulnerable moments that made her such a great character.
I only have one criticism, if you can call it that, and that was that the main character did seem to be a bit older than she actually is in the story but it did seem to fit at times considering her back-story and what she had to go through. Wayward was also surprisingly creepy at times. It was definitely a new for me. What got me though was the fabulous ending! It was so great. She knew my name, but reveled in deliberately mangling it.
The business end of a spatula shot through the window and came to a stop less than an inch from my nose. Give the table to Jenny. I was really regretting not decking her when I had the chance. She turned on her heel, blonde ponytail whipping me in the face, and sauntered to what should have been my table with a switch in her hips. I watched as she served the beers, leaning over so all four men seated at the table got a good look down the v-neck of her shirt.
It was disgusting but she'd probably net at least an extra five bucks. My only other table paid and left, leaving an okay tip and a pile of balled up napkins and half-empty glasses for me to clear up. The sound of Jenny's high-pitched giggle coming from a few feet away set my teeth on edge. I leaned over the counter, my arms resting against the cool glass. I stared at the clock on the wall, willing the hands to move a little faster.
It was a slow shift, achingly so, and all I wanted was to get off work and try to salvage the night. Larry insisted on keeping the diner open twenty-four hours. It was getting painfully obvious to everyone but him that we didn't have the customer base to support that. Evenings were our busiest time and I normally ran out of things to do by eight.
Leno's on 56th served Chicago-style hotdogs before the dish was famous. A grimy picture of Al Capone, butt planted firmly in one of the same stools with red, cracked vinyl seats that still lined the bar, sat under the glass counter next to the cash register. These days, Leno's wasn't much more than a run-down greasy spoon, sandwiched in between a dry cleaners and a Korean grocery store, serving the same crappy food as a hundred other places in the city.
Nobody considered waitressing an ideal way to make a living but the job did have its advantages. While we're on the subject. Plot devices. It seems the only reason Hex gave her friend, Sam, that book - her aunt's book? Not to mention the way her grandmother's?? The other thing I didn't like in this book was the world of magic the characters seemed to live in.
What made people like Hex special was that they could perform magic, but then how on earth does that explain the fact Sam was later able to cast the scrying spell?! If all it takes for a human to make magic work is the right tools and right incantation, then it just defeats the whole idea that "humans are lesser" than they were.
Moving on to the conspiracy going on throughout this book. The only power struggle happening was Hex's father and Darius' plan of offing Valentine in order to form some kind of new order. And using Hex to find Valentine's weakness. Sure, the idea was ok - none too brilliant, but ok - but the execution? Well, let's just say Blair Waldorf could pull it better. In the end, they did Jack Shit. Only Darius somehow suddenly popping up when everything was over.
While we're on the subject, what I don't get is why Valentine didn't just skip all the bullshit and kidnap Hex from the start hence saving us some petty high school drama?! I mean, obviously he knew where she was, since apparently it was him who sent Cynthie. I think what I'm trying to say is, most of the bulk of the book was useless. And a non-event.
A useless non-event. What the hell did Zach have to do in the plot progression other than as a love interest and bait for Hex?
Heck, Valentine didn't even need bait if he really felt like it. What about all these other characters who are so forgettable? Emily Anne? Hex's parents? The third let-down for me has a lot to do with these secondary characters. Also a lot to do with telling-not-showing. I believe in a fair balance between showing and telling. But throughout the book we were just told and told and told of the dangerous Wayward family. Marco was a psychopathic bastard. Marice is a temptress.
And their parents are also dangerous. But we see none of that. All I got was Marco playing around with Sam during the end-of-winter party which was also one huge non-event, by the way, only there so Sam would find out Hex was a witch - because there's no other way to do it.
But it was all just a build up with nothing to show for it in the end. We saw nothing that proved Marco to be such a bad-ass. I saw nothing dangerous about any of the other characters, either. Well, Valentine had his moments, but there was so little of his character that I just didn't give a shit. My fourth and final complaint is more on the technicalities of the book. In the same freaking paragraph I'd find: "My sister's voice was like cubes of ice tinkling in a crystal glass - sweet and cold.
Marise, youngest by less than a minute, shone like the palest moon. Metaphors are fine, but I still believe you need to use it wisely. And definitely not crammed up like that, otherwise it just makes the narrative sound affected. But there are some things I liked about the story. No, not the romance. I am still yet to read a YA where the romance wasn't obvious and so contrived. I'm talking about the relationship development between Cynthie and Hex. That was one thing I could appreciate.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. Show full review. It starts out with a female protagonist with a constant negative attitude whose clearly hiding a dark and terrible secret. That doesn't bode well. At least there's no stew being served. Despite the rocky start, the entertainment value of the novel picks up pretty quickly.
While almost all of Hex's family and 'friends' are 1-dimensional caricatures, it works fairly well in the context of the setting, a rebellious teen returned to her family and sent back to high school, magical powers and related side plots notwithstanding.
I might have enjoyed parts of this book for the wrong reasons. I found amusement in the Hex's constant struggle to simply live her life with the gorgeous atypical band member heartthrob but grappling with her real and figurative demons; mostly because I found that whole thing cliche and idiotic, but still fun to read. While trying to crystallize how much I dislike this book, the more I reflected on it, the more I felt that there were so many missed opportunities to really flesh the world out, add more detail, and develop the characters more, the end result being to make something far more captivating.
Hex's new best friend Sam is defined only by her nerdiness, obsession with magical things unaware of the reality of it and naivete. At one point a demon is summoned by Hex's faux friends; a demon that does nothing, says nothing and is taken care of off screen.
Somehow, after being raised in an exceptionally privileged society, and running away for about a year, Hex at some point picks up mechanic skill enough to build a motorcycle from scratch unrealistic, but not too bad in a book about magic. There's not much action to speak off, fights maybe, and no vivid descriptions of magic at all.
Its ironic that there is an army of killers to keep the secrets from getting out, and yet there is so little magic to speak of in the novel.
I could nitpick a dozen more things, but they're not dealbreakers. All in all, still a fun, quick read for me. The cover is a little silly, the prose not exactly literature standard, but it manages to avoid the 'perfect' female protagonist having the world falling at her feet. What cliches do exist are not overdone, and even though almost every other female character is described in a dim light, it works in this setting.
It seems that this book was self-published; and there were a few formatting and writing errors, more then I'd expect, but overall, a pretty decent read.
This book has a lot of potential and would benefit dramatically from an experienced editor. And more importantly get people reading my work. Even if nothing more ever comes of it at least I'm moving forward.
I've been a fan of Seth Godin for awhile now. I love that he takes really simple ideas and applies them in ways that should be obvious but that nobody seems to think of. Like: don't treat customers like crap or they won't come back. He has a post from a few days ago that's really stuck with me: "I don't accept for a minute that there's some sort of natural limit on your ability to do just about anything that involves creating and selling ideas.
I'm not going to believe that only a few people are permitted to be gatekeepers or creators or generous leaders. I have no intention of apologizing for believing in people, for insisting that we all use this moment and these assets to create some art and improve the world around us.
Saturday, April 2, Shameless Self-Promotion. Availability: Amazon , BN , Smashwords. Wednesday, March 30, A shiny new blog for a shiny new me! Say hello to yet another blog by yet another anonymous person hoping to carve out a small space for themselves on the vasty interwebs. I wrote a book. Actually, I've written several books but this was supposed to be the ONE. Needless to say, things didn't work out quite the way I'd planned.
Fifty agents, 28 full requests and too many rejections to count later, I've chosen a new direction. A less directional direction. Don't get me wrong, traditional publishing is still my pie-in-sky dream and it probably always will be.
But let's be honest, publishing kind of sucks right now. Bookstores are going out of business left and right, publishers and chains are getting into fights, and Snookie made like 2 million dollar publishing a book probably written by a trained monkey. Assuming Snookie is not herself in fact a trained monkey.
Maybe this particular book isn't right for the traditional publishing landscape. As sad as that makes me I understand it.
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