Review: Breathless by Cole Gibsen

Title: Breathless
Author: Cole Gibsen
View: Goodreads
Buy: Amazon
Dates read: June 11, 2012
Rating: ★★★☆☆


Edith Smalls is a broken little girl. She wants nothing more than to blend into the background and stay invisible and under the radar. She skirts along, staying just out of trouble so that her strict Military stepfather doesnt send her away to military school. In attempts to please him, she goes on a date with kids that she would never typically hang out with. The date ends in a horrible boating accident and Edith getting terrorized by a savage girl in the water. It's easier to feign amnesia than to admit she was attacked by a mermaid. After meeting Bastin, a strange boy with silver hair and black eyes, she has to fight not to lose her heart to an impossible love.

As I read through this story, I really wanted to like it. It did hold my attention and I did blow through it like I would a really good book. At the end, the whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth. Edith and Morgan were very good characters, actually, I think most of the characters were good.

Sir was a horrible man. I dont care what his reasons for being the way he was were, he is a monster. I found myself gritting my teeth and becoming overly enraged every single scene he had in the book. I kept wondering why Edith or her mother didnt stand up to him. He needed knocked down a peg. At the end, even after his issues are made known, the mother still stays with him. Its just unhealthy. I know it was made to look like he would be getting help, but after 13 years of being that monster its just not right.

Edith and Bastin's love affiar was unbelivable. Did they fall for each other over a greater period of time, or was it really only about the 2-3 weeks that I thought the book took place over? Were they star crossed lovers? Seriously, I dont see how it worked. Bastin went from being someone who didnt know real emotions to suddenly being in a deep painful love? I just couldnt buy it.

Reading the summary of the book, I was expecting more action. A LOT more action. I was horribly disappointed in all of it. The climax was poorly planned and when it happened it was emotionless. It wasnt built up very well, its like this was meant to be entirely a love story and the action was thrown in during an editing request. It was disjointed and just didnt mesh with the rest of the novel.

The ending was bad as well. I believe this is meant to be a stand alone novel and yet the ending was left fairly open-ended. It had a bit of a cliffhanger in general. What is the purpose of that? Not to mention that the cliffhanger left it open for a book that would be horrid to begin with.

It had a few cute scenes with good dialog, but it lacked too much else to be worth more than 3 stars.          

Review: Night School by C.J. Daugherty

Title: Night School (Night School #1)
Author: C.J. Daugherty
View: Goodreads
Buy: Amazon
Dates read: June 04 to 05, 2012
Rating: ★★★☆☆


Allie has been a bit of a troublemaker since her brother Christopher ran away. Now she has been arrested for the third time this year and her parents have had enough. They ship her off to board at Cimmeria Academy for the summer term where she has no access to phones, stereos, computers, or the outside world at all. The rules are incredibly strict and then there is also the Night School classes that other students are not allowed to know about or watch. When Allie is attacked one night, it begins a string of events leading to a death during a dance and secrets around every bend. When it seems like everyone is lying, she must find out who she can trust, and quickly, before the danger catches up with her.

I want to say first, that this book is incorrectly shelved on Goodreads. Its listed under Paranormal and Vampires, and there are, regretfully, neither within it's pages. Seeing those shelves and then reading the summary, especially the part about the Night School had me super excited thinking that the story was going to be similar to Vampire Knight. As I met the characters (Especially Sylvain) I got more and more hopeful so part of my disappointment may be based directly on the book being mishelved.

The characters were fine. There are a few side characters that you feel might have more importance but end up fading away into the background. Others are kept so mysterious that it makes them poorly characterized. Allie drove me a bit batty. She starts out so troubled and sarcastic and then she flipflops as soon as she is in the academy and is suddenly a good student. Her panic attacks are random and some of them quite uncalled for. Its like the author has no knowledge of such things but wanted to make her more broken and added them in anyway. Having Carter tell her about his old attacks was just pointless. It was a "too little, too late" characterization. Then, Allie's lack of thinking about her family and old friends was misplaced and random. Its almost like the author went through and thought "Oh! I havent had her think about her parents in a while *adds in passing*. Oh! This person needs a bit more characterization *adds randomly*".

The story focuses too much on the love triangle. The anger/hatred/jealousy between Sylvain and Carter is too unexplained. There wasnt enough tension in the triangle and so the whole thing falls apart. You start out adoring Sylvain and then he becomes a wanker and you just fall into Carter the same way Allie does. Its like, why even have bothered with the triangle at all? Then, as things go by and Sylvain apologizes for being a wanker, Allie just ups and forgives him without worry. She still trusts him and its misplaced.

Because of the love triangle being so forefront, the story itself lags. The climax happens incredibly late and its horribly anticlimatic even then. You can tell that this was meant to be a series. The author wanted to make you asks tons of questions and give you few answers but in the end she makes you ask your tons of questions and gives you no answers. Nothing is cleared up or properly resolved. Everything is just swept under the run until company leaves, obviously to be tackled in the next book, which is always a poor idea. If you wait to tackle all the questions in the next installment you end up forgetting things or dragging on the story and annoying your readers.

Regardless of all the bad, I still enjoyed it. It was an enjoyable read with a frustrating ending is all. I think if the next installment were already out then I would have much warmer feelings for this novel.