Between Here and Forever {A Review}

Title: Between Here and Forever

Author: Elizabeth Scott

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Published: 2011

Rating: 2 stars

THE SCOOP

Abby accepted that she can’t measure up to her beautiful, magnetic sister Tess a long time ago, and knows exactly what she is: Second best. Invisible.

Until the accident.

Now Tess is in a coma, and Abby’s life is on hold. It may have been hard living with Tess, but it's nothing compared to living without her.

She's got a plan to bring Tess back though, involving the gorgeous and mysterious Eli, but then Abby learns something about Tess, something that was always there, but that she’d never seen.

Abby is about to find out that truth isn't always what you think it is, and that life holds more than she ever thought it could...


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Geez... and I thought I had self-esteem issues. This girl... man. Poor Abby. I wanted to snuggle and hug her and tell her she's perfect in her own way and strangle her at the same time. Her incessant "woe is me" attitude seriously started to wear on me. And really... she is totally not perceptive at all. I feel I'm a pretty unobservant person and that I don't read people all that well, but c'mon.

So that might've been my biggest issue with the book. Which is bad since she is the main character and everything is from her point of view. But I, as a reader, knew more than she did. I picked up on the 'clues' long before she did. I saw everything she didn't. It seemed everyone had a little bit of the 'woe is me' attitude going on tho. Except for Claire. Claire was pretty awesome. She knew who she was and had no problems with how people saw her. But everyone else? They were so intent on caring about and only seeing what they thought everyone else saw. A LOT of assuming was going on, which was quite annoying.


I think the premise of the story was really good. It hooked me and I wanted to know how it all went down and turned out. And although there was some growth in Abby, I felt it took a lot of hitting her over the head with things to knock her out of herself.


Overall not a bad read. I don't know that I would *highly* recommend it to anyone and everyone, but if someone is looking for a slightly sad, self-discovery type book, then I might suggest it. :)

Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn: A Review

 

The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series in Kate Karyus Quinn's haunting debut.

On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.

A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.

Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.


 


I wanted to like this book. I really, truly did. I wanted to fall into it and come out barely able to breathe. Alas, that is not the case.

In fairness to the book, I did not reread the jacket flap, nor did I reread the Goodreads description before plucking it off my shelf. After reading about 100 pages, and being utterly lost in my confusion, I got back up and read the jacket flap. Needless to say, I was still weaving through the maze, trying to find my way out. Everything felt so disconnected, disjointed, that I had a hard time enjoying it. Even after finishing it I am still quite confused.

When we're introduced to Annaliese, she has been missing for nearly a year and doesn't remember anything. Nothing about her life before she went missing and nothing about the year she was missing. She's recognized, tested, and confirmed as being Annaliese Rose Gordon. She has no recollection of ever being Annaliese and has no connection to "the mom" and "the dad", as she calls affectionately calls them.

Just as in the dark as Annaliese, we get to experience her flashbacks/memories of the past. Unfortunately, there were times I had to double check to make sure which I was reading - the present or the past. And the memories didn't always make sense. They would end in a weird place that just made me wonder what the point of it was. The transitions between present/past left me more confused than knowing. I typically don't mind the jumping back and forth - between past/present, characters, whatever the case - but this was so disjointed it was hard to follow.

I never really connected with Annaliese. Even when we get glimpses of the 'before' Annaliese, I'm not sure I would have liked her much. She was obsessive and slightly stalkerish, making deals for which she didn't question the outcome. As 'after' Annaliese, she's a bit more likeable, but I simply didn't feel that much for her. Then there's Logan, who wants to atone for his past sins and is convinced he is in love with Annaliese. It's kind of creepy, in a way, but I wonder if this had something to do with the deal that Annaliese made. Despite his transgressions and need for a morality check, he did have a couple redeeming qualities. Enter Dex, the not-so-American-boy-next-door. She, for some reason, is drawn to him. She trusts him almost immediately, and he her. He has a way of always smiling about things and keeping the air light, which as we find out, is probably harder for him than he lets on. And Eric. Eric is a douche. An asshat. He speaks in riddles and manipulates her every chance he gets. He knows everything yet says nothing revealing.

There were subplots that didn't, and still don't, seem relevant to me. There are things that happened that still don't make sense to me - the how/why of it all. And as a horror story, I wish that Quinn had been able to deliver a darker atmosphere. I didn't feel scared for the characters, or anxious, or much of anything, really.

I left this feeling a bit disappointed. The premise is great, but I feel the execution could have been so much better. This is a horror story, people, and I wanted to be scared, to be repulsed by the things happening. (Seriously, there's a part where I should have been going, "EEK! That's so gross! No! Don't do it! *shudder*", when in reality, I went, "Huh.")

All that being said, I can't say I definitely won't ever read another book by Quinn, but I don't see myself putting it at the top of my TBR list.