El despertar

 I was really hoping this was going to be one of those zippy books that I get sucked straight into and can't put down. The premise is interesting, I do like dual-narration, especially when there are secrets involved, and it sounded a bit unusual. I felt let down. The characters never drew me in at all. It started badly, with a "best friend" interaction that would have had me putting out an ad on Craig's List for a new one, because wow, that is not how you treat your best friend of many years. Or your friend. Or your acquaintance, even. Or, for that matter, anyone that you don't want to hate you forever. It was treated as a normal interaction, too. From there, we moved straight into the insta-love to end all insta-loves. Now, I would like to digress a moment and state that "love at first sight" books are not the abomination to me that many in the book community feel they are. I'm a fan of the old Cinderella story, and I'm willing to accept moving fast in bookish relationships. Heck, my parents got married very quickly (if you're reading this, hi Mom! Love you guys!) and have been happily married for many years. It happens. It can work. It is sometimes adorable to watch people fall head-over-heels very fast.  Not these people. I don't really understand what they saw in each other, which is particularly problematic for two main reasons. Firstly, we get the viewpoint of both "love interest" characters, so how do I not understand their attraction to each other? Even if I can't see it from one character's point-of-view, I should be able to see it from the point-of-view of the person in love with them, no? Secondly, the center of the story is not really the plot, it is their love. I find this problematic in itself, given it was the plot that originally drew me into the story, but to have two characters I don't really feel anything for going through the motions of a potentially interesting plot while telling this love story that is incomprehensible as such except for all of the cutesy nicknaming and immediate declarations of complete adoration is rather horrifying to wade through to get to the parts that I care about. And in the end, the plot wasn't that great, either. That's probably the worst part, the biggest letdown: I forced myself to continue through to see how things would end up, and there are no surprises, no shades of grey, nothing to make me understand the thinking behind this other group even a little bit.  Why are they doing these things? I'm not sure it even makes sense in the context of the book, and the convenient plot holes are rather alarmingly numerous. I was hoping to be thrilled and willing to allow an awful lot if the book gave me that, but in the end it didn't. It gave me a dry, overblown love story with simple main characters, simple dialogue, simple villains, and secondary characters that completely fall out of the plot occasionally they are so impersonal. The author left a hook for the next book, and while I'm kind of interested in the plot, I think I'll be leaving that one alone, because it will be just packed to the brim with moments of mushy teenage love fest, and I just don't want to bother trying to struggle through to the interesting bits. This book was provided to me for free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Scarlett Garner nie pamięta nic sprzed swoich czwartych urodzin...

*** Gifted via Netgalley for my honest review ***This book is on the one hand an interesting idea, and I enjoyed reading it, but there were one or two issues that I had with the story... one being the age that she lost her memory - on Goodreads and NETGALLEY it says FIVE in the story it was FOUR? OK this is a bit of a minor point - but there should be a consistency - CHANGE the Blurbs to match the storyline.But this age/memory loss in itself is a bit of a issue with me (I don't remember much of my childhood under the age of 9) and I have asked both my kids and my husband, this question and they don't remember much if anything specific about their childhoods other than stories told by us and visual stimuli through photographs. that are mentioned on more than one occasion. I think its probably the case that its unusual for kids TO remember anything from their childhood before the age of 5 rather than not remembering.So anyway for the story told Scarlett Garner has no memories after a house fire that the family only just survived from. Her family do not talk about it and she is happy not to push, until she meets a new boy at school and he starts to question why she isn't more interested in why she can't remember, and then a car accident causes her to get flashbacks that cause her to want to learn more...So we have the New boy as I said, who's name is Noah, and at first he seems good for Scarlett, she begins to get more confident in herself, But Noah has a BIG secret... Will the blossoming relationship prove to be real or is it just a game to him with a hidden agenda that his family are orchestrating.The character development was a bit sparse, and when we delve into the reason for the secrets, I raised my eyebrows at some of the scenarios, i.e. UK and Ireland are not that huge or sparsely populated that a commune/cult would stay hidden.I think in the end the most memorable character in the story is Noah, Scarlett is naive and at times annoying but for me the thing that kept me reading was the internal struggle Noah had when we the reader realise his secret - which I don't want to elaborate on as I will spoil it for new readers.This is the first book I have read by Ms Preston, But I do have another [b:Second Chance|22881587|Second Chance|Natasha Preston|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1407375003s/22881587.jpg|41348763] That I have on my TBR. As I said this is a good enjoyable thriller, but the age would have been much more believable if it had been set at an older age, and if it had been set in the USA, I could have believed that this cult could go under the radar a bit more.The ending gets quite tense and I do wonder if Ms Preston intends on writing another novel about these characters, as there is one tiny part that is left unexplained, and if she did I would want to read it to find out what happened to that particular character.