Hunting Lila

Author: Sarah Alderson

Publishing Company: Simon Pulse

Blurb:

Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever.

After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust – her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother fives years before. And that they’ve found them. In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realises that she is not alone – there are others with special powers out there – and her mother’s killer is one of them…

The review:

I had no intention whatsoever to pick up this book at first. One of the women in my bookshop (who I might add has recommended amazing books to me and knows what I like) gave me one while she was restocking the shelves and said it looked good. So I picked it up, without properly reading the blurb. The other day while going through a slow part of a book I can’t review for spoilers, I picked this up at midnight to just read a couple chapters before bed. I finished the whole book at half three, and that included me trying to get to sleep every so often!

To try and accurately explain what this book is about would be very hard. So I’ve got a few things to compare it to. The film Push, X-Men and The Darkest Powers trilogy. None of them are entirely accurate, but you sort of get the different things through.

The book is very interesting and a fun read, though I don’t think I knew what was going on half the time. It’s fast paced, never really stops and you hit the ground running. I’d like to show you the first sentence of the book to explain what I mean:

Only when the tip of the knife started to shave against the white of his eye like a scalpel about to pierce a boil, did I realise I was the one holding it.

There’s something rather terrifying and intriguing about that sentence, and the rest of her writing. At points she’s very blunt about her rather gruesome imagery, things that you can really picture with a scary amount of detail. I think what also makes it feel so fast paced throughout is that we start off in London, and then within the first chapter we end up in California.

The characters I felt were very mysterious, every single one of them was hiding some form of secret from the others. Lila was hiding the fact she liked Alex and the reason why she ran away, Alex and Jack (her brother) never spoke of what it was exactly what they did, throughout the book you realise that there are all these secrets that each character has kept from the other characters and when you start to think you know exactly what’s going on, you get another secret that’s been kept from everyone. It’s very entertaining, but it makes you wonder what the heck is going on.

Lila was definitely a very different character from what we usually see in books like this. She knew what she wanted, knew what to say and what not to say, and yet she still seemed innocent enough that she wasn’t too sure of herself. Plus you could feel that ‘I can’t stop thinking or talking or dreaming about this boy’ crush where it was literally all she could think about. And who hasn’t been there before?

Alex was definitely a boy you’d instantly fall for, so I could see where Lila was coming from. He was this person who seemed genuinely nice, as well as really good looking and smart. I did feel some of it felt a bit forced at points with these two, but besides that it was very cool.

Finally, Jack was pretty awesome. He was the protective big brother with all his own demons and secrets and problems. I felt rather angry at him for some parts, but for the most part I did feel like I’d love him to be my brother…or I’d love to have been his girlfriend. Definitely my favourite character in the book.

The twists in this book were endless, you didn’t now which way the plot would go, and finally at the end of it, the plot twist was one of the most shocking and amazing cliffhanger end I’ve ever read. I was desperate for a copy of the next book like now (please? I’ll bake cookies and cake?).

Overall I definitely recommend this to people if you want a fast paced exciting and fun read that will keep you guessing and make you want to read the next chapter straight away.

My rating:

Setting: 4 out of 5

Characters: 5 out of 5

Plot: 4.5 out of 5

Writing: 5 out of 5

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