Eh.

Hey world! It is time yet again to review books, and I have two of them today! There's a bird flying around me as I type. It's very distracting, but in a cute way. Hopefully he won't land on my fingers and cause more than the usual amount of typos. He's certainly going to make this take longer with his demands for attention every few seconds! Okay, it's me demanding attention from him. Semantics!

So, a little while ago, almost a week but not quite, I finished this book called Illusive by someone with a hyphenated last name that I can't remember and now have to look up. Emily Lloyd-Jones is her name, and series books are her game. And by that I mean that this is book one in a series which I know has a sequel coming out in July, but I'm not sure about anything else. Maybe it's just a duology. Maybe I'll never know. 

Summaryish: Gosh, do I have to summarize? I really want to get to the review part. After a deadly virus kills a bunch of people (what is it with me and deadly viruses lately?), a cure is eventually found. But it has life-changing side-effects. A very small percentage of people with the cure develop talents no human should have, such as inescapable hypnotism and mind reading. The government, in an effort to both control these people and take advantage of them, gave them all a choice - go to a special prison, or work for them. But many people, including Ciere, took the third option - a life of crime and thievery. She and her crew are then hired to steal something people thought was gone for good - the formula to the recalled cure.

Review: I keep telling myself over and over again to have grace because it was a debut. But still, as far as debuts go, this was disappointing. First of all, there was the tense issue - maybe I've just never read something third person present tense before, but something about it felt wrong. I guess I'm just one of those people who thinks that if you're going to write in present tense, it needs to be first person. It's just logical. In addition, there was so much information dump - I like my back story effortlessly woven into the story in a way that doesn't disrupt the narrative and keeps things moving. I have no complaints about the characters, and the plot was fine, especially after that halfway mark. Last time I didn't like a book, especially that first two hundred pages, the second book was pretty good, so maybe I'll keep going. But at this point, I'm not exactly itching for the sequel.

About the Title:

I do like the play on the words...

Okay, see you in a few minutes.

-Xxxxxx