Raven (★☆☆☆☆)By: Suzy Turner
Series: The Raven Saga (1)
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult
Pages: 258
Format: eBook
Features: Shapeshiftrers
Lilly Taylor isn't really Lilly Taylor. In fact, after her parents mysteriously disappear from their London flat one day, she ends up living in Canada with family she didn't even know she had, learning secrets that would likely send even the most well-adjusted, real-life teenager off to wallow in, well, the stuff of parent's nightmares.
Not Lilly, though. Nope, Lilly spends a night sleeping and all is good in the world. Of course she has questions - who wouldn't? But, this is a young adult novel and thus everything must come easy, right?
I confess, I'm not the target audience for this kind of book. Yet, I have read many young adult novels that have had a compelling story with characters I grow to care for. Characters who respond in a way a normal human being might, who suffer, live and breathe as we do. This is not something you find in Raven.
I gave the book one star, purely because despite all temptation to remove the book both off of my Kindle and delete it entirely from my Amazon order history, something kept me going. Then again, there were plenty of things that kept me going only to have them succinctly and completely removed with no conflict or resolution. The only conflict we see in Raven is the hope that Lilly's father is still alive, and the confrontation with her father's wife.
Now, I won't spoil it for you, but expect that encounter to end well, very anticlimactically. In fact, if I were to compare this book to sex... lots of talk, very little follow-through. Though, I'll give the author another chance on account of it being her first time and all.
