Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
Feb. 18th, 2013 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Kami Glass is in love with someone she's never met - a boy the rest of the world is convinced is imaginary. This has made her an outsider in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, but she doesn't complain. She runs the school newspaper and keeps to herself for the most part - until disturbing events begin to happen. There has been screaming in the woods and the dark, abandoned manor on the hill overlooking the town has lit up for the first time in 10 years. The Lynburn family, who ruled the town a generation ago and who all left without warning, have returned. As Kami starts to investigate for the paper, she finds out that the town she has loved all her life is hiding a multitude of secrets- and a murderer- and the key to it all just might be the boy in her head. The boy who everyone thought was imaginary may be real...and he may be dangerous.
Kami Glass has spent her whole life in the picturesque town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, deep in the heart of the English countryside. An outsider both because of her ethnicity (she’s a quarter Japanese) and by the fact that she has an imaginary friend called Jared, whose voice she’s heard ever since she was little.
When the Lynburn family – lords of the manor – return after a 10 year exile, Kami’s excited to finally have a story. Why did the Lynburns leave? Why are they back? She ropes her best friend Angela and her brother Rusty in to help her find out but soon meets the charming and attractive Ash Lynburn when he applies to be the photographer on the school newspaper that she’s started. However it’s his cousin, Jared, who takes her attention – an arrogant, rude, dark and dangerous bad boy who just happens to also be her imaginary best friend ..
Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest novel (the first in a YA gothic paranormal trilogy) is a disappointing story populated by one-dimensional characters and peppered with one-note humour that fell flat. It’s an odd misfire from the usually reliable Brennan but I won’t be reading on.
The biggest problem is Kami. She doesn’t speak like a teenage girl and her dialogue with both friends and family is peppered with a forced humour that didn’t work for me. Her relationship with Jared had the potential to be interesting but instead descends into bickering and simmering attraction. Similarly Ash is standard third point in the triangle material, only undergoing some interesting development in the final quarter – by which time I’d already lost interest.
For a supposedly gothic book, it lacks either a gothic feel or any sense of tension. Instead the plot meanders from event to event until there’s a sudden rush of developments in the final quarter that lack cohesion and rely on a two-dimensional villain who’s been obvious from the start.
There are some needless mistakes in the text, e.g. Kami decides to take a bus to Ealing from Waterloo when the Tube would be quicker, trains to the Cotswalds don’t go into Waterloo and Cambridge doesn’t run a journalism course and it’s riddled with Americanisms that exist solely to appeal to American readers.
I’m a fan of Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON and will read her other work, but I’m not going to continue with this series.
The Verdict:
Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest novel (the first in a YA gothic paranormal trilogy) is a disappointing story populated by one-dimensional characters and peppered with one-note humour that fell flat. It’s an odd misfire from the usually reliable Brennan but I won’t be reading on.
Kami Glass is in love with someone she's never met - a boy the rest of the world is convinced is imaginary. This has made her an outsider in the sleepy English town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, but she doesn't complain. She runs the school newspaper and keeps to herself for the most part - until disturbing events begin to happen. There has been screaming in the woods and the dark, abandoned manor on the hill overlooking the town has lit up for the first time in 10 years. The Lynburn family, who ruled the town a generation ago and who all left without warning, have returned. As Kami starts to investigate for the paper, she finds out that the town she has loved all her life is hiding a multitude of secrets- and a murderer- and the key to it all just might be the boy in her head. The boy who everyone thought was imaginary may be real...and he may be dangerous.
Kami Glass has spent her whole life in the picturesque town of Sorry-in-the-Vale, deep in the heart of the English countryside. An outsider both because of her ethnicity (she’s a quarter Japanese) and by the fact that she has an imaginary friend called Jared, whose voice she’s heard ever since she was little.
When the Lynburn family – lords of the manor – return after a 10 year exile, Kami’s excited to finally have a story. Why did the Lynburns leave? Why are they back? She ropes her best friend Angela and her brother Rusty in to help her find out but soon meets the charming and attractive Ash Lynburn when he applies to be the photographer on the school newspaper that she’s started. However it’s his cousin, Jared, who takes her attention – an arrogant, rude, dark and dangerous bad boy who just happens to also be her imaginary best friend ..
Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest novel (the first in a YA gothic paranormal trilogy) is a disappointing story populated by one-dimensional characters and peppered with one-note humour that fell flat. It’s an odd misfire from the usually reliable Brennan but I won’t be reading on.
The biggest problem is Kami. She doesn’t speak like a teenage girl and her dialogue with both friends and family is peppered with a forced humour that didn’t work for me. Her relationship with Jared had the potential to be interesting but instead descends into bickering and simmering attraction. Similarly Ash is standard third point in the triangle material, only undergoing some interesting development in the final quarter – by which time I’d already lost interest.
For a supposedly gothic book, it lacks either a gothic feel or any sense of tension. Instead the plot meanders from event to event until there’s a sudden rush of developments in the final quarter that lack cohesion and rely on a two-dimensional villain who’s been obvious from the start.
There are some needless mistakes in the text, e.g. Kami decides to take a bus to Ealing from Waterloo when the Tube would be quicker, trains to the Cotswalds don’t go into Waterloo and Cambridge doesn’t run a journalism course and it’s riddled with Americanisms that exist solely to appeal to American readers.
I’m a fan of Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON and will read her other work, but I’m not going to continue with this series.
The Verdict:
Sarah Rees Brennan’s latest novel (the first in a YA gothic paranormal trilogy) is a disappointing story populated by one-dimensional characters and peppered with one-note humour that fell flat. It’s an odd misfire from the usually reliable Brennan but I won’t be reading on.
