The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
Series: Darkest Powers
Publisher: Doubleday, 2008
Genre: Horror
Sub-genre: YA, Paranormal
Rating: 4 1/2 pints of blood
I have two initial reactions to this cover. The first is me dancing with joy that there's no underage cleavage being shown off. The second is me being very sad that I'm so easily pleased when it comes to the cover of a supernatural YA novel.
Actually, I have no complaints about this cover. It's tastefully shot, the necklace is significant to the story, and I like the monochromatic tones with the occasional splash of colour. The black lace pattern on the back cover is gorgeous, too, and the whole thing sets the mood perfectly. On the whole, the cover is eye-catching, and exactly the sort of thing I'd pick up off the shelf to take a closer look at. Then again, having been written by Kelley Armstrong, whose Women of the Otherworld series I have a serious fondness for, I'm not someone who's going to randomly come across this book in the store, but that's another story altogether.
Chloe Saunders is your average fifteen-year-old girl. She's not particularly popular, she's shy around boys, everyone thinks she looks several years younger than she actually is, and she stutters when she's nervous or under stress. She has a couple of friends at school, but she secretly thinks they might be more mature than she is. What Chloe wants more than anything else is to blend in, just be like the other kids.
Her dreams of normalcy are cut short, though, when she starts seeing and hearing weird things at school, things nobody else seems to notice. When the ghost of a half-melted custodian starts accosting her, Chloe's reactions lead everyone to think she's insane. She quickly finds herself in a group home for teens with issues, diagnosed with schizophrenia. Chloe can't explain what's happening to her, but she doesn't think she belongs at Lyle House.
In spite of the drugs and counselling sessions, Chloe keeps seeing and hearing things, and it sounds like the ghosts she doesn't want to believe in are trying to tell her something. The other kids seem pretty willing to believe she's not crazy, she just talks to ghosts, and soon it's clear some of them are hiding secrets of their own. Nothing at Lyle House is what it seems, and Chloe has to find out what's really going on, both with her strange abilities and with the rest of the house.
The Summoning is set in the same world as Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, but with a whole new cast of characters. Aimed at the YA crowd, the sex and violence themes have been toned down a little, but there's still plenty of meat for readers to dig into, and I never got the feeling things had been "dumbed down" for the younger readers. I blame my burnt dinner on the dark tone and the involving mystery, both of which kept me turning pages when I probably shouldn't have been.
Chloe makes for a great heroine. She's strong, smart, and easily relatable. I really liked her tendancy to stutter, a quirk I don't think I've seen used before in a protagonist, but it was a simple and effective way to portray the social awkwardness she feels. Chloe felt like a real teenager, with all the insecurities that go with the territory, but this wasn't 400 pages of whiny angst. She faced things that weren't fair, but then she turned around and did something to stand up for herself instead of crying into her pillow.
The story is full of smaller mysteries, all of them piling together naturally to create a bigger mystery that isn't solved by the end of the story. This is the first of a planned trilogy, and my only annoyance with the book is that I don't have the other two in my hands right now. It's very much a horror story (it would have terrified me had I read it as a YA myself), but with the hints of magic, romance, and teen drama, there's something here for everyone to fall in love with.
The long and short of it is, this book is everything Twilight wishes it could be and isn't. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes a little YA now and then, but you have to get your own copy. Mine stays here with me.
Publisher: Doubleday, 2008
Genre: Horror
Sub-genre: YA, Paranormal
Rating: 4 1/2 pints of blood
I have two initial reactions to this cover. The first is me dancing with joy that there's no underage cleavage being shown off. The second is me being very sad that I'm so easily pleased when it comes to the cover of a supernatural YA novel.
Actually, I have no complaints about this cover. It's tastefully shot, the necklace is significant to the story, and I like the monochromatic tones with the occasional splash of colour. The black lace pattern on the back cover is gorgeous, too, and the whole thing sets the mood perfectly. On the whole, the cover is eye-catching, and exactly the sort of thing I'd pick up off the shelf to take a closer look at. Then again, having been written by Kelley Armstrong, whose Women of the Otherworld series I have a serious fondness for, I'm not someone who's going to randomly come across this book in the store, but that's another story altogether.
Chloe Saunders is your average fifteen-year-old girl. She's not particularly popular, she's shy around boys, everyone thinks she looks several years younger than she actually is, and she stutters when she's nervous or under stress. She has a couple of friends at school, but she secretly thinks they might be more mature than she is. What Chloe wants more than anything else is to blend in, just be like the other kids.
Her dreams of normalcy are cut short, though, when she starts seeing and hearing weird things at school, things nobody else seems to notice. When the ghost of a half-melted custodian starts accosting her, Chloe's reactions lead everyone to think she's insane. She quickly finds herself in a group home for teens with issues, diagnosed with schizophrenia. Chloe can't explain what's happening to her, but she doesn't think she belongs at Lyle House.
In spite of the drugs and counselling sessions, Chloe keeps seeing and hearing things, and it sounds like the ghosts she doesn't want to believe in are trying to tell her something. The other kids seem pretty willing to believe she's not crazy, she just talks to ghosts, and soon it's clear some of them are hiding secrets of their own. Nothing at Lyle House is what it seems, and Chloe has to find out what's really going on, both with her strange abilities and with the rest of the house.
The Summoning is set in the same world as Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, but with a whole new cast of characters. Aimed at the YA crowd, the sex and violence themes have been toned down a little, but there's still plenty of meat for readers to dig into, and I never got the feeling things had been "dumbed down" for the younger readers. I blame my burnt dinner on the dark tone and the involving mystery, both of which kept me turning pages when I probably shouldn't have been.
Chloe makes for a great heroine. She's strong, smart, and easily relatable. I really liked her tendancy to stutter, a quirk I don't think I've seen used before in a protagonist, but it was a simple and effective way to portray the social awkwardness she feels. Chloe felt like a real teenager, with all the insecurities that go with the territory, but this wasn't 400 pages of whiny angst. She faced things that weren't fair, but then she turned around and did something to stand up for herself instead of crying into her pillow.
The story is full of smaller mysteries, all of them piling together naturally to create a bigger mystery that isn't solved by the end of the story. This is the first of a planned trilogy, and my only annoyance with the book is that I don't have the other two in my hands right now. It's very much a horror story (it would have terrified me had I read it as a YA myself), but with the hints of magic, romance, and teen drama, there's something here for everyone to fall in love with.
The long and short of it is, this book is everything Twilight wishes it could be and isn't. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes a little YA now and then, but you have to get your own copy. Mine stays here with me.