Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Low Red Moon


The only thing Avery Hood can remember about the night her parents died is that she saw silver—deadly silver, moving inhumanly fast. As much as she wants to remember who killed them, she can't, and there's nothing left to do but try to piece her life back together. Then Avery meets the new boy in school—Ben, mysterious and beautiful, with whom she feels a connection like nothing she's ever experienced. When Ben reveals he's a werewolf, Avery still trusts him—at first. Then she sees that sometimes his eyes flash inhuman silver. And she learns that she's not the only one who can't remember the night her parents died.Part murder mystery, part grief narrative, and part heart-stopping, headlong romance, Low Red Moon is a must-read for teen paranormal fans. As breathless as Twilight and as spooky as Shiver, this is a book to be devoured in one sitting—by an acclaimed YA author making her paranormal debut under the pseudonym Ivy Devlin.
from amazon.com

Beth says 3 Stars...

This book looked moderately interesting, so I decided to give it a whirl. Sadly to say, I've had many better ideas. It isn't to say the book was necessarily bad, but it wasn't really good either. It fell into the realm of mediocrity, which is just made worse by how much paranormal fiction is out there. If there wasn't really any available I might say to give it a try, but I'd suggest grabbing something else. The plot set off no fireworks in my imagination and ended up being rather predictable. The villain created some serious issues because, to put it bluntly, the "evil" was lame. I couldn't understand why it would happen and also there was no build up to the final reveal. After I read it, I had a "wait... something important just happened, but I missed it" moment. The plot also wasn't terribly thrilling or inventive. I just felt like reading another run of the mill paranormal romance.

The characters did absolutely nothing to make me enjoy the book more. One problem was that the book was extremely short and therefore character development had to be sacrificed to make room for the plot. Avery never grew in the entire novel. She had to change because of circumstances, but I didn't see any sort or internal progression forward. Devlin also almost refused to explain most of Ben's backstory, and despite the fact that he needed to be a dark and mysterious love interest he could have used a little beefing up. The chemistry between the two of them wasn't that bad and beat out more than a few other paranormal couples. The supporting cast never stood out for any reason and were obviously there to provide a backdrop for the emotional trauma of Avery. The most interesting of them was Renee, Avery's grandmother because she had a backstory (which I figured out 50 pages before it was revealed).

Overall this book was nothing special. If you have to have a paranormal fix and it's the only thing around go for it. However, don't go rushing out to buy it as soon as you can. I will say that the formatting of the book is really fantastic. I'm totally a sucker for having color inside, and the red worked really well with the story and cover. That's the only thing special about this book, unfortunately.
Book from Library

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