Plot:
To be extraordinary was a fate Arie Belle had never imagined. She was comfortable living the simple life on a meadow protected by towering trees just outside of town. Her days were filled with naïve pleasures and promising love until the unexpected and mysterious death of her mom. Instantly, her world became dark and, at times, hopeless. Her only saving grace was her lifetime friendship with the boy next door, River, who was relentless in picking up the pieces of her broken future.
Years of numbness were lifted when a beautiful stranger, Ashe, entered her world and took her soul to places it had never been, across realities trapped in the worlds of fairytales. Would he be her savior, or would she find the strength within to be her own?
Her journey begins on her eighteenth birthday and quickly unravels what she is and who killed her mother. Her uncanny connection with nature and heightened sensations are just one of many secrets that unfold along the way. Will she find answers before the next full moon where her death is painted in the fate of the stars? Will she accept a scripted destiny or let the dark side of life suck her in?
Review:
Overall, I was not a big fan of this book. While I enjoyed the world that the novel was set in, I feel like the execution of how the story was written and pieced together could use some work.
Most notably for me, the main character, Arie, can never seem to make up her mind about who she loves. If there’s one thing that I can’t stand in Young Adult fiction it would have to be the overabundance of love triangles and this book was definitely no exception. Throughout the entire novel, Arie is constantly waffling between loving River, her best friend for as long as she can remember, and Ashe, the mysterious boy who one day appears out of nowhere. Arie will have an encounter with Ashe and think that she has made up her mind and loves him with all of her heart, and then River will come around and Arie changes her mind, thinking she loves River the most. This continues through the whole book.
Other than that messy love triangle, I felt like the story took an overly-long time to explain what kind of world these characters were living in and what sort of fantasy creatures we were dealing with.
I think that this story had a lot of potential to be captivating but in the end it didn’t live up to my expectations for it.
