Review: Abandon

Title: Abandon
Author: Meg Cabot
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance
Rating: PG
Publisher: Point
Publication Date: April 26, 2011
My Rating: 3***

[Goodreads | Amazon]

Synopsis

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.


My Thoughts

Abandon was the first book written by Meg Cabot that I have ever read. I honestly had very high expectations for this book – due in part by all the buzz it was receiving on the internet, and because of the author herself. While I did enjoy the book, it didn’t live up to my expectations at all.

The book is about a girl named Pierce and her love interest John. Her story is told in pieces and parts throughout the book as a way of not giving it all away at one time. The story is almost a re-telling of the Greek origin myth of Hades and Persephone, only Pierce is not Persephone and John is not Hades even if he does kind of have his job. Subtract Demeter, Persephone’s mom who helped her escape, and add the furies intent on making John’s existence miserable and there you have the story in a nutshell.

I like that this wasn’t just a re-telling of the same old origin myth, but with different names. It could have just been explained so much better and way earlier than the last 4 chapters of the book. The explanations of what was going on in the book were a big problem for me on a whole. Thing are referenced rather than explained in this book. Pierce refers to the incident that happened back at her old school quite often, but doesn’t get around to explaining it till the middle of the book. When it does come time to explain, it is not done very well and leaves you with more questions than answers. I found myself a bit distracted as the reader is left to infer what happened in this incident, rather than the being told outright. This is pretty much a symptom that is repeated with everything in the book. It leaves more questions than answers, but not in such a way that you find yourself satisfied at the end of the book, but the eagerly anticipating the next book in the series.

While the book does take a while to get going, it is a relatively easy read (I read it in cover to cover in 3 hours). Since this is the first book in a trilogy, I will read the remaining two books when they are released, but I didn’t like this book enough to make me run out and buy them on publication day.

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