Donna Smith

3 1/2 stars.
I liked this book! The complexity and realism of characters drew me in, and the mystery elements also really worked–I kept thinking, they must be getting close to a solultion...then plot twist! Nice one.
Generally, teens solving crimes at boarding school is as two-dimensional as could be, but this book managed to let me suspend my disbelief on that one.
This book is too gritty for me to recommend to the school library where I work, but violent, sexual, mental illness, family dysfunction, and drug-related content wasn't gratuitous. The things that should have messed people up and resulted in them being a bit broken did, in fact, result in brokenness, and no one, kids or adults, were 100% black or white (except our villain, who was pretty straight forwardly evil).
Spoiler: An image that will linger is Jamie crawling under the porch and choosing to hold Charlotte while she's mean and high, saying yes to their weird friendship, choosing loyalty and to be present.

This review contains spoilers.
I can't summarize what this book is about to others without laughing aloud at the ridiculousness. Of course a runaway programmed-from-childhood Russian assassin was rescued deep under the sea by an autistic uni-diving water mage entrenched in her rural idyll created by a found family of other (probably) elemental mages, because: what else? Oh, and she has a pyromaniacal stalker. And survived the foster system.

Despite the over- over- over-the-topness of it all, this one zipped along (except for the pages-long sex scenes, which I started skimming because: I get it. You're into each other.). Also, so interesting were the detailed descriptions of diving/urchin harvesting on the California coast! Very nifty.

But: tone! Every time someone pontificated about the heroine's disabilities because of autism, I flinched a bit. It's like the nuance between being an autistic person and a person with autism. To everyone in this book, including the heroine, she's an autistic person. She “had some form of autism, yet she had carved out a life for herself in spite of all the odds...” “If she was autistic, she was too high functioning not to have had some help as a child.” “There would be a few people in her life who appreciated her quick mind and bravery facing the challenges of a world she was born too sensitive to function in properly–yet she managed, carving out a life for herself against impossible odds.” Maybe because this is 2010 and autism awareness has shifted just that much in 13 years, these quotes sound cringey? But if I were picking fiction to represent the successes and difficulties of life on the spectrum, this wouldn't be on my list.

I liked a lot about this book, and might try the others in the series once I absorb the ridiculous elements a bit more. (Runaway Russian assassins!!) I like stories of healthy found families and the urban fantasy elements, so I may be up for more. (This is my first Feehan.) I agree with other reviewers that some things were just repeated tooooooo many times. (Like: I get that she has BLACK EYES because we are told a dozen times or more...but what colour was her hair again? I can't picture her in my mind except as too skinny (also oft repeated) and with BLACK EYES, or maybe they're BOTTOMLESS black eyes. (Which to me sounds like her pupils are blown because of chemicals, trauma, etc., but what do I know? Bottomless like the sea, no doubt.) 3 1/2 stars

DNF at 40%. It was kind of interesting and clever and I liked what it was doing with subverting tropes, but then I switched to another book and never got back to it and didn't miss it, so... bye. I loved Meg Cabot comedic, witty style when I first came across her books 25 years ago (Princess Diaries, etc.).

It's probably a mistake to read fanciful romance at the same time as reading Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score because I have in my head detailed descriptions of the myriad ways humans react to complex trauma, and Kleypas' heroes don't react consistent with the detailed and gripping exampels in van der Kolk's influential text. They bought and paid for their HEA far too easily and were messed up far too little for the trauma Kleypas describes.

However, they did feel like real humans with some real reactions set in a well-researched world written by a skillful author–and maybe the genre isn't really about realistic trauma reactions, and ploddingly working through the years and years of re-writing brain and body reactions to overcome trauma before a stable, loving, mutual relationship can be earned and believable? There definitely were some true-to-life trauma reactions–the hero's trouble sleeping and violent nightmares, the heroine's reaction to teenaged abuse of freezing (one of the fight/flight/freeze reactions to danger).

I'll keep reading Kleypas, whom I've enjoyed in the past...but maybe I should read non-fiction alongside van der Kolk for a while unless I wish to be unduly critical of the whole fantasy world of a romance script.
3.5 stars

Re-reading this with students in an English class.
Is it just because I'm middle-aged that teen Mary Shelley's MC Victor seems TSTL? Come on, dude: you've got every advantage, yet keep walking into the metaphorical dark alley because you won't trust the DOZENS of people who love you? And then you abandon Ernst?? Probably my strong reaction just connects to messages Shelley wanted me to get loud and clear...but what an annoying main character! The second time through, my sympathies are much more firmly with Victor's creation than Victor.

I'm also annoyed that this book barely passes the Bechdel test of having two women talk to each other about something other than a man (Don't Justine and Elizabeth have, like, 2 sentences to say to each other in the prison?). But, I am also annoyed on behalf of Mary Shelley that her teen-aged work of genius was produced in a context that shaped it into a work that barely passes the Bechdel test... I'm cheering for you, nineteenth-century proto-feminists!

Reading this the second time, I'm still impressed at Mary Shelley's achievement. My students (generally around 17-y-olds) found lots of things to talk about in this book–we read it alongside selections of Paradise Lost, so lots of good class discussions there about all sorts of things (theology & religion, gender & power, etc.).

A good book-club read so you can hash out with your friends all the things that are going on with family, nature, Romanticism, the relationship of the artist/creator to the creation, what makes us human, etc. And can hate on Victor for being dumb. Just sayin'.