Name: Awoken
ISBN: 9781491268728

Serra Elinsen

Andromeda Slate, the self-proclaimed most ordinary girl in America, can't figure out why the gorgeous but mysterious new boy at high school seems to hate her so much. It couldn't have anything to do with the strange dream she had the night before he first showed up in class, could it? The dream where the very same boy rescued her from a giant, green, tentacled sea monster?

Awoken

Monicap

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to admit this, but I was reading this as though it were parody, and I think it best to review it on those grounds as well.

As far as the parody of the melodrama of YA romances, this was very on point and over-the-top. At times, the melodrama was so believable one could almost belive that this were a straight YA paranormal romance.

For me, the most interesting (and disturbing) part of this parody was the main charater's relationship with her best friend. When I was watching the video and Lindsay and Nella were talking about how they had to make this relationship a balance of toxicity disguised as friendship, I was like "yeah, yeah, yeah" but I wasn't really interested in that as an aspect of the parody until I actually read the book:

"Bree Fifan [and I] had become inseparable over the past couple years, but I could still never quite figure out why someone like Bree would want to hang out with me. She was just so full of life in a careless way... She was as loud and quirky as her Goodwill clothes. and being the de facto leader of the school's 'thespians' (as she liked to call them) came naturally to her. On top of all that, she had the annoying habit of being crazy smart in just everything--nothing seemed to difficult for Bree, not even dealing with the taunts and catcalls that her edging-towards-marshmallow curves occasionally earned her... Being friends with Bridget Fifan could really make a girl feel inadequate. Not that is was her fault! Bree would never do anything to put a person down. I just couldn't help it. Bree was just so much... more than me."

The above passage really upset me when I read it, and I realize that there is a lot of that kind of friendship between girls in YA novels, it's just usually a lot more subtle. But, then again, that's the point of parody, isn't it?

Regardless of the well0constructed parodical elements, this was also an incredibly clean draft--there were few spelling/grammatical mistakes, which annoy me in self-published works.

Kudos for a good book and a point well made.

Scribbler Johnny

This book made me smile so many times while I read it. The ending made me feel very happy! Love truly can change anyone! What a blessing it is to be loved!

Awoken

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