Monday, August 22, 2011

Book Review: Wicked Cool by Diane Farr

Zara Norland has a problem. It’s getting harder to hide who—or what—she is. Which is pretty ironic, actually. Because Zara doesn’t know who, or what, she is.
 Enter Lance: Incredibly hot, supernaturally powerful, and full of answers to questions she hasn't even thought to ask.
But is everything he says true? Now Zara must decide if Lance is the love of her life or her enemy. Which world does she belong to? And is the choice really hers?
Amazon Product Description

My Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let me start by saying that with my love of paranormal romance comes some issues.  First and foremost being that a large number of books in this genre are young adult.  Not a big deal usually and something you can soon forget when you get lost in the story... not so true with this one.

Is it fair for me to judge a young adult book for being too teen angsty?  No, not really, I guess it comes with the territory.  This one was a bit brutal for me though.  The first issue I had was that the author thought it necessary to write in journal form.  I'm not completely sure why this bothers me but it does, maybe because it doesn't seem "realistic" to me. (Yes I am judging a paranormal book where the girl can do magic on whether the writing is realistic... get over it.) Really, though, who writes full on dialogue in their journal? I'm just saying...

I had a really hard time getting into this one, but I just kept telling myself that with all the 5 star reviews on Amazon it must be worth it so I plowed on.  The beginning was good and exciting, we see Zara the main character accidentally use her magic in public.  After that though things slow way down. 

In comes the attractive Lance, hiding in the woods none the less.  From the beginning Zara senses something "off" with him but keeps convincing herself he is ok. (Sound familiar? Yes Zara's relationship with Lance is quite similar to my relationship with this book.)  This back and forth goes on for quite a while meaning that we don't actually learn anything about Lance or what Zara is until halfway through the book, which is quite frustrating.

*Slight Spoiler Ahead*

This is when things get ugly.  Lance begins to try to convince Zara that she is better then the measly humans around her by having them all turn on her.  Way to middle school girl for me but I guess that's his style.

**Major Spoiler Ahead**

The best part of the book is the last 5% (Kindle reader, I live in percents not page numbers.)  When Lance attacks and she is extremely close to losing it all she summons all the power she can muster and blasts him to timbukto (No really I have no idea where he went, he just dissapeared which was strange.)

Wrap Up

The reason I ended up giving Wicked Cool 3 stars instead of 2 was because the end gave me a slight hope that the sequel might be kinda good.  Do I reccomend it? No, I really could have passed on reading this one.  It ended up being more frustrating then anything.

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