The Haunted by Jessica Verday

Plot

In the second book of this trilogy the reader finally starts to get some answers - but not until page 300.

Abbey returns from her Aunt's house, where she has been staying to get over the revelations about her boyfriend Caspian at the end of the previous book, to give a speech about her deceased best friend Kristen.

Once home Abbey tries her best to ignore Caspian but the inevitable happens and she finds herself back in Caspian's arms (if you've read the first book you know what I mean.) It was an obvious plot twist that I didn't appreciate the way it was written.

Something I didn't like about the plot was the lack of Kristen. The whole series started with Kristen's disappearance and the first book was filled with memories but in this book there's nothing. Caspian has replaced her, I just find that so unrealistic.

On the positive side this book had a brilliant climax, it was only a few pages long but it had tension, excitement and a truly inspiring twist.

Writing

In the last book the thing I loved the most was the writing and you'd think with another 467 pages of it I'd be positively delighted, but I wasn't. I opened the book and I was in heaven but the core of the book changed from grief to undying, eternal love and it wiped away the most human angle of the story for me.

Also i found the pacing to be really odd. Abbey just suddenly accepted Caspian when a more gradual approach (in my opinion) would have worked just as well if not better.

That doesn't mean I hated the book and the writing, I didn't, it just means that in my head I wanted it to go in a different direction.

Characters

First of all I still don't like Abbey and Caspian and with Kristen's memory practically erased, I was expecting to say that the characters awful and I spent my time wishing that I could dig ahole, throw them in it, and leave them there forever, but two things happened:

I adore Ben, in book 1 he had potential and in The Haunted it's realised. He's so cute and geeky and he loves onion flavoured crisps (Me too! Monster Munch are amazing!)

The other reason is an interesting new arrival called Vincent. I can't say much about him but I think I'm in love with him.

Therefore it's all good on the character front.

Overall

It's another solid read. Although I didn't like every aspect of the book and I was really critical of its flaws, I can kind of see where it's going and it could either equal a blinder of an ending or a bit of an obvious one. I still prefer book 1 though.

In the end I decided to give it three stars (as opposed to the 2.5 that I wanted to give it for the majority of time I was reading it.) because it had a brilliant ending that redeemed it a bit. I'd recommend it but there are as few swear words and some quite sexy scenes in there so maybe not for younger teens.

I got the image off Google, no copyright infringement is intended.

The Hollow by Jessica Verday

Plot

There isn't really much of a plot to the book and in a way that's not the negative thing that it probably should be. The book focuses on Abbey, a girl who has just lost her best friend Kristen. Kristen has vanished from the bridge near Sleepy Hollow cemetery. While Abbey is at the memorial service she sees a mysterious guy in the distance. This guy turns out to be Caspian, a guy who seems to appear around Abbey a lot. Thats about as much as I can tell you without giving anything away.

Writing Style

The writing style is beautifully descriptive and in that sense it reminds me of Michelle Zink's prophecy of the Sisters. As much as I liked the writing it had its flaws as descriptive as it was, it was lacking where it really needed description. At the end of the book all I knew about Abbey was that she had black curly hair, she liked to make perfume and that she wasn't tall enough to reach the bottom of a bin. The same has to be said of all the characters. Though this has it's advantages because, as the reader, you have pretty much free reign to imagine what the characters look like.

Characters

The characters are, for me, believable. Kristen is definitely my pesonal favourite. All you know of her is from memories and diary entries and that's precisely why I like her. In my opnion it's Kristen's story because her death is at the heart of everything, she's the one who started these chain of events, even if it was unintentionally.

Abbey is a beautiful character who is filled with such sorrow that sometimes it overwhelmed me. I love her quirky hobby, it's nice to see a character like her who isn't into poetry or art.

Caspian (whose name reminds me of Narnia #4) is really hard to explain although I do think he's a bit of an idiot.

Other characters in the book aren't really worth mentioning as they are just a means to an end. None of them are really fully developed.

Overall

Overall I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. It's beautifully written but there feels like there's stuff missing. I would recommend the book but only because I think it's one of those books where everybody sees it in a different way. The story is beautiful and I love that about the book. So many stories have a different variation of the same plot but this is different.

I can't help but wish that there was more to it though, something was lacking but maybe these issues will be resolved in the next book, The Haunted.

I'm going to give it three stars for some awesome description and some characters that stay with you after you've put the book down.

I got the image off google. No copyright infringement was intended.