A Reading Vocation

This is pretty typical paranormal romance fare -- love triangles, twists the reader has figured out long before the protagonist does, a secret world that exists alongside our own, etc.

There's nothing new or original here, despite the fact that the paranormal baddies here are pixies, which get less pay than, say, werewolves or faeries. But there are also werewolves, and other were creatures that are a little on the cheesy side.

Characters are fairly one-dimensional. Zara's passion for real-world issues evidenced by her involvement with Amnesty International never really mesh with her desire to save others from the dark pixie world. I think I would have rather read a book about her going to another country to protest for the release of political prisoners than this -- as it was, the interest felt sort of arbitrary, something to convince us that Zara had a "life" outside her paranormal quandaries, but an interest does not a personality make.

Other characters were similarly flat, sometimes given one or two interests as if that would "flesh them out." The story was not suspenseful or eerie as it purported it would be. In fact, I didn't feel a whole lot while listening to this book, period -- except annoyance at the audiobook reader. I would not recommend the audio version of this -- the Maine accents feel bogus to me, and they make everyone except Zara and the pixies sound EXACTLY the same. This means Zara's grandmother and her crush basically have the same voice. Yeah, that part didn't really work for me.

So I have very little good to say about this book, but it gets three stars anyway because I didn't HATE it, either. It held my interest well enough for me not to be impatient about when it would get over the whole time -- but not well enough that I would ever even consider picking up the sequels.