On The Verge
R.J. Jojola
Within the confines of their homeland, Raelle Jowellia and her siblings were never allowed to travel outside their secluded valley. Having never come into contact with anyone outside of their immediate family, they had only one another to depend on. But after the mysterious and gruesome murder of her younger brother, Raelle suddenly finds herself stricken with grief and hopelessness. Lost within the inescapable nightmare of her trauma, Raelle is tormented with a relentless need for answers.
But answers reveal much more than Raelle bargains for, when she discovers that the magical practices, daunting creatures, and menacing demons of her father’s bedtime tales are anything but fiction. As a dark force closes in, the shock of her family’s secret leaves her in shambles. Completely alone in the valley, she is left with only bits and pieces of the puzzle. Lost in a world that is on the verge of collapse, she is faced with a formidable choice. Will Raelle be able to outrun her family’s sordid past, or will she allow it to devour her very soul?
A meddlesome stranger may be her only hope or her demise ...
**
2 Stars
I found myself extremely disappointed in this book. When I came across it late last night I remember actually saying out loud that it sounded really interesting. I couldn't wait to start getting into it and in the beginning was really enjoying myself.
Probably somewhere around a quarter of the way into the book I started to really lose interest in everything. More when Chrishtan came into the picture. In my opinion taking a look into Chrishtans past the way we did really took a lot away from the story. I can understand how it let us get to know him better but it started to make me feel that it was taking away from Raelles story that I was already invested in. I lost who was suppose to be the main character and who wasn't. Sometimes this can really work in a book but in this case it dragged on way to long and made me start to lose a lot of interest in everything.
What really started to kill everything for me was when the first real "battle" happened. Not wanting to give anything away here but what I thought would be a real clash with something very powerful lasted little more then a few remarks made and a quick sword swing that left me very unsatisfied.
There is also heavy religious tones in this book. It didn't really bother me to much but my eyes did tend to glaze over at times.
The finally and deadliest stroke of this story was the way it ended. I can't even call it a cliffhanger cause it was so much worse. More like that feeling of when you are going down the stairs and you think there is one more and there really isn't. I can't even really get across how mad it made me for it to end the way it did, it felt like just when things were getting more interesting again and I when I went to turn the next page Amazon was asking to review it instead. I'm pretty sure my mouth dropped open and I back tracked a few pages to just make sure it was actually the end.
All in all I really ended up not liking a lot about this book, I couldn't get attached to any of the characters, the plot didn't interest me after a certain point and the "villain" was just the name of some guy that seemed to have caused problems.
To be on the fair side the writing itself was good, no grammar errors that I could notice (but its not something that really would stand out to me) and everything did flow smoothly. I was only thrown out of the story when I got disappointed in something that happened. That in and of itself is enough for me to not give it a flat one star. There is a lot of potential here, it just really fell flat for me, I can see with time and a little more polish this author coming out with something that I can really love.
On a side note I really loved the cover art,
Would I recommend this book? No, there are plenty of other books out there that are much more interesting than this one.
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