Abandon

Author: Meg Cabot

Publishing Company: Macmillan Children’s Books

Blurb:

Pierce knows what it’s like to die.

Last year she flatlined following an accident.

During that time Pierce saw a dark world and met a mysterious irresistible boy.

Now that boy, John Hayden, has turned up at school. Every time she sees him Pierce finds herself in terrible danger. Yet she’s still drawn to him.

John wants to take her back to the place she fears the most: the Underworld.

The question is, why?

The review:

I was excited for this book because I love the mythology about Persephone, so to have a book all about retelling it, was going to be good. But, I was disappointed with it. I’ve heard some great things about Meg Cabot’s books, but I don’t know if I’m too old to read them, or if I just had too high expectations, but I didn’t see it as something as good as it had been made out to be.

The first thing about it was the fact that the plot didn’t properly kick in until the very end of the book. Before the plot properly kicked in of how and why Pierce was in trouble, you have flashbacks and information about the past that filled in the blanks that we needed to understand the rest of the story. It seemed like more of a set up of a series than a story on its own, which was slightly disappointing. I would have liked it if I got more of a story behind it instead of the set up to what seems like it could be a very good story.

Another thing was I couldn’t find the main character’s voice. I found that though she was telling us all of these things, I couldn’t feel her emotions or I wasn’t interested. I found her dull, and because of that I wasn’t that interested in her story. I wanted to be, but she was too vague and revealed things over a long period of time, when really I just wanted to know what happened straight away to get the story moving.

We also have John, the love interest, who granted was definitely mysterious bad boy who you would love to meet, but I didn’t feel any chemistry between him and Pierce. I get that he’s a lot older than he looks, and that he’s desperate to fall in love with someone so that he doesn’t have to spend more of his time alone. So we see him falling in love, but we don’t understand why he did. It annoyed me because I would have liked to see the reason behind why he liked her, but we didn’t see any of that.

The other characters in the book I felt you didn’t see them enough to care about them. I mean the bad things that happened, yeah it was sad, and the anger some of the characters felt, for right or wrong reasons, it was there and you could understand why they felt it, but you didn’t get a sense of the characters. For example, at the beginning of the book, we have Alex, who seems to be the annoying little cousin who you can never get rid of. Then later on in the book, you find out he’s practically the same age as Pierce. It felt forced to see the characters act the way they did.

The plot was good, when it got into the main plot, you could see the plot had been well thought out, I just didn’t think it was written properly. I think that if it had started in a flashback, and we’d been shown it in chronological order, then it would have been easier to digest and better to read. A lot of times I felt lost in Pierce’s memories and felt like when I was back reading about the present, I couldn’t follow along and it felt really weird.

Overall, I think the series should be good, I just didn’t like the way that this set up the rest of the books. I thought it was too forced and there was too much information to get to the end were she wanted it.

My rating:

Setting: 4 out of 5

Characters: 3 out of 5

Plot: 3 out of 5

Writing: 3 out of 5

If you read the book, I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll talk to you guys later! Bye x