Hunting Lila by Sarah Anderson
Oct. 19th, 2011 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just be looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever. Or thereabouts. After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust – her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them. In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone – there are others with special powers out there – and her mother’s killer is one of them …
17-year-old Lila has two secrets – her love for her brother’s best friend, Alex, and her telekinetic ability. But when an attempted mugging in South London forces her to reveal her power, she uses her dad’s credit card to buy a flight to South California and her brother, Jack. He and Alex are in the army, part of a secret section called The Unit, which she learns are involved in looking for the people who murdered Lila and Jack’s mother.
Although Jack wants to send Lila straight back to London, things are complicated when the people Jack and Alex are looking for find out about Lila’s ability. Forced to go on the run with Alex, she desperately tries to stop her secrets from coming out but soon she discovers that Alex and Jack have secrets of their own and that all of them are being lied to …
Sarah Alderson’s debut novel is a romantic thriller with supernatural powers that manages to blend the genres without ever muddling the genres.
Told by Lila in a strong first person voice, it’s a fast-paced read with plenty of plot developments and I thought Lila was a largely believable character, especially with regard to her crush on Alex (the scenes where she feels self-aware around him are well realised, as is her jealousy of another girl who she thinks Alex is dating) and her fears as to her brother’s reaction if he ever discovered her power. However, while Lila is well drawn, Alex and Jack never really came alive to me. Alex in particular never rises above being perfect boyfriend material to become a character in his own right and I never really understood what attracted him to Lila beyond the fact that they’d grown up together.
My main issue with the book though is that there is no one really for the characters to react against. The mysterious people Alex and Jack are looking for remain shadowy until half-way through the book and when they are introduced, the central twist is easy to guess based on other information drip-fed through the plot. Partly this is because the book is there to set-up the premise, but it does give the book a set-up feel.
The book ends with a cliffhanger and a set-up for a sequel, which I will probably read.
The Verdict:
This is a readable YA romantic thriller with supernatural powers, which blends each of the genres without ever muddling them and which has an interesting central character in Lila, who has a strong voice. However, I did find the romantic love interest, Alex, to be too perfect to be believable and I would have enjoyed it more had there been a strong antagonist for them to struggle against. That said, I will check out the sequel and look forward to seeing what Sarah Alderson writes next.
HUNTING LILA was released in the UK on 4th August. Thanks to SIMON & SCHUSTER for the ARC of this book.
17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just be looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever. Or thereabouts. After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust – her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them. In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone – there are others with special powers out there – and her mother’s killer is one of them …
17-year-old Lila has two secrets – her love for her brother’s best friend, Alex, and her telekinetic ability. But when an attempted mugging in South London forces her to reveal her power, she uses her dad’s credit card to buy a flight to South California and her brother, Jack. He and Alex are in the army, part of a secret section called The Unit, which she learns are involved in looking for the people who murdered Lila and Jack’s mother.
Although Jack wants to send Lila straight back to London, things are complicated when the people Jack and Alex are looking for find out about Lila’s ability. Forced to go on the run with Alex, she desperately tries to stop her secrets from coming out but soon she discovers that Alex and Jack have secrets of their own and that all of them are being lied to …
Sarah Alderson’s debut novel is a romantic thriller with supernatural powers that manages to blend the genres without ever muddling the genres.
Told by Lila in a strong first person voice, it’s a fast-paced read with plenty of plot developments and I thought Lila was a largely believable character, especially with regard to her crush on Alex (the scenes where she feels self-aware around him are well realised, as is her jealousy of another girl who she thinks Alex is dating) and her fears as to her brother’s reaction if he ever discovered her power. However, while Lila is well drawn, Alex and Jack never really came alive to me. Alex in particular never rises above being perfect boyfriend material to become a character in his own right and I never really understood what attracted him to Lila beyond the fact that they’d grown up together.
My main issue with the book though is that there is no one really for the characters to react against. The mysterious people Alex and Jack are looking for remain shadowy until half-way through the book and when they are introduced, the central twist is easy to guess based on other information drip-fed through the plot. Partly this is because the book is there to set-up the premise, but it does give the book a set-up feel.
The book ends with a cliffhanger and a set-up for a sequel, which I will probably read.
The Verdict:
This is a readable YA romantic thriller with supernatural powers, which blends each of the genres without ever muddling them and which has an interesting central character in Lila, who has a strong voice. However, I did find the romantic love interest, Alex, to be too perfect to be believable and I would have enjoyed it more had there been a strong antagonist for them to struggle against. That said, I will check out the sequel and look forward to seeing what Sarah Alderson writes next.
HUNTING LILA was released in the UK on 4th August. Thanks to SIMON & SCHUSTER for the ARC of this book.
