Awake

I really wanted to like this as it was the first book we chose for a book club I joined, but I am absolutely not the target audience. I didn't care for any of the characters and found any emotion superficial. The concept of the plot itself was interesting but I have a low tolerance for visualizations of children being harmed. I had to skim through a lot of these parts to get through to the end. As I said, I am not the target audience. These were characters I couldn't even begin to relate to and the writing style felt hurried, which I will attribute to being geared for a younger audience.

Apparent sappy romance meets creepy and dangerous. Your past will catch up to you one day, even if you don't remember any of it.2,5 Stars for this thrilling novel that may very well be reality somewhere.

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I received a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A love story that, in the beginning, feels as sappy as Twilight and it made me pause after the first few chapters and praying that it wouldn't be like that throughout the whole book. It became evident rather soon that I had nothing to fear. Or at least not an overly sweet romance. This isn't your typical high school romance full of ‘I-love-yous' and a happy ending.

Don't get my rating wrong. I enjoyed the book, I really did. It was different from everything I'd read up to that point and I couldn't anticipate what was going to happen or what was really going on and the reason behind all this. Heck, until about halfway through the book I wasn't even sure whether a fantasy element would pop up or not.

But.

Oh, such an evil little word.

The fact that Scarlett can't remember anything from the time before she was for is supposed to be weird?! I don't remember anything from when I was a kid save for a few images . But isn't it like that for a lot of people? I'd find it more weird if someone told me they remember something before their fourth birthday.
The author should've used a different age. Around ten or so would've been much better and more believable. Every time this fact gets mentioned in the book or someone just barely points in its direction I get really itchy. This was a poorly used and executed plot device which dampened my enjoyment of the overall story quite a bit.

Aside from that I found the dialogue lacking. It all felt kind of flat and did very little to give me the feeling of getting to know the characters better.

Well done on the other hand how the author managed to creep me out when Noah's POV came up. Creepedy creep creep.


It's scary what strong believes and fanaticism can make people do and one doesn't have to look far in order to see similar things in today's world. The story isn't far fetched and that's what makes this novel that tad bit scarier.

The overall story was good and I enjoyed it. Alas, all the things that bothered me like dialogue and poorly used plot devices that failed when used as sort of character trait left a huge dent in my rating.