Paranormalcy Review

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

Publisher: Harper Teen, August 31, 2010

Pages: 335

Genre: Paranormal Romance

From: Library

Synopsis: Weird as it is working for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, Evie’s always thought of herself as normal. Sure, her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she's falling for a shape-shifter, and she's the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours, but still. Normal.

Only now paranormals are dying, and Evie's dreams are filled with haunting voices and mysterious prophecies. She soon realizes that there may be a link between her abilities and the sudden rash of deaths. Not only that, but she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal. From Goodreads.com

This came out around the time I started my blog.  Now it's almost the one year anniversary.  I remember really looking forward to this book among others around the time I became addicted to the HarperTeen Facebook page which led me to the blogosphere.  Now that I've finally gotten around to reading it, I'm disappointed.

          Paranormalcy started out fast.  The suspense and action came rolling in and the characters followed fast.  It took me only one day to finish it.  Then it did an odd thing it slowed down where it should have sped up.  An entire scene was repeated; I'm not sure how an editor would allow that.  We all know that gripping feeling you get at towards the end of the book where everything is finally coming together and to put the book down now would be a sin.  It's my favorite part of the book.  For some reason the action stopped.  This did ruined the book because now that the author had lost my attention I was able to find lots of flaws.  I know that many people liked this book and I did like it, but this was the author's first book so naturally there were some flaws.  As readers we only have her editor (and the sales manager) to blame. 

         In this loll of action many of the characters became very annoying to me.  I had noticed before that the walk on characters were very underdeveloped.  This is the mark of an author whose books are enjoyable to read but will never be more than that.  I'm sure many young adult reads don't mind that.  I do.  Evie could be described perfectly by her prized Tasey, the pink-studded taser she carries around with her.  She has a very kick butt attitude, and she's an enjoyable character that made me laugh.  In my opinion she was too nice.  Her flawlessness was not believable.  Lend was really cool.  He had these awesome powers and the scenes between him and Evie where so cute, but he was too perfect.  I would have loved him even more if he were a bit more human.  All of the characters were this way, even the villain.  I felt no sympathy for her even though her childhood was tragic.  The author had a great idea with the villain's queer motivation, but it was not played out enough to touch the emotions of the reader.  I don't want to be able to instantly tell who I can and can't trust.  I want the characters to speak for themselves making me question their motivations.  I don't want to be told who is good or bad.  I want to figure it out myself.

        Despite all of these little annoyances I enjoyed the book.  The author had a strong imagination and a true love for her story.  I could see why many people gave it good review.  Kiersten White has a promising future.

Characters-5
Plot-6
Suspense-7
Pace-7
POV-6
Style-6
Cover-8 (gorgeous)
Overall- 6.5