Need Book

I randomly picked up this book at the library. I had seen it at Borders at least a dozen times, and I needed a book, so I decided to check it out.

Okay, let start off with the basic plot.
Zara, a once popular and happy girl living in Charleston, watches her father die of a heart attack on their kitchen floor. Feeling depressed and "dead inside," her mother forcibly sends her to Maine to live with her grandmother because somehow solitary confinement will help her cope. There, she makes a whole bunch of new friends and enemies as soon as she steps in the door (literally), and she acquires a 'powerful' stalker. She is surprised to find out that pixies and weres exist, and her stalker is actually the King Pixie. She is also shocked to find how her family has ties to the age old battle between the pixies and the weres. She has to fight along side her new best friends to help save the world, and save herself from becoming the Queen Pixie.


Now that that's over, let's talk about my opinion.
All right. One word to describe this book: stupid. You could actually use pointless too! This book felt like a complete waste of time, and it took every inch of my willpower to finish it up. Halfway through the book, I was about to throw it against the wall or something! Talk about unoriginal and forced! Whew! This book was obviously written for the Twilight crew, for the two books greatly resembled each other (and that is definitely not a good thing.)
Anyways, let's break it down into elements:

Negative Elements:
The Plot - I've seen this plot time and time again. Girl with tragic past moves to new town. Girl makes a boatload of new friends and is torn between two unrealistically hot guys. Girl gets into trouble through her own stupidity that is somehow portrayed as courage. Helpless girl gets beat up a little (but not so much as to distort her pretty features) and is saved by her love. With the help of her "awesome" friends, the bad guy is defeated. Girl ends up with hunkiest guy.
That was the plot, no joke. It was so predictable... so boring. The ending, however, is what really made me uncomfortable. Way to make the bad guy look like a wimp and set up a boring ending, Ms. Jones.

The Characters - I thought the characters, especially the main one, were extremely annoying and unoriginal. Zara is a perfect embodiment of Mary Sue. She was too perfect, and idealized by the other characters. Nothing is wrong with being liked by others, but it is a problem when you're loved by all and don't have a personality. Her lack of flaws, stupidity and neediness alone was enough to drive me insane. Continuing the trend of current YA novels, she was way too dependent on Nick. She couldn't live without him, couldn't stop thinking about him, etc. The other characters were also perfect in pretty much every way; they only had a few, obviously placed flaws. The antagonists were wimps who were too stupid for their own good.

The "Romance" - Gosh, talk about corny. The romance between Nick and Zara was completely fake. Nick, of course, was REPEATEDLY (as in throughout the entire freakin' book) described by Zara as having bulging muscles, smooth skin, dreamy eyes, a washboard stomach, a Mediterranean tan, ultra-soft lips, luscious hair, manly scruff, blah, blah, and blah. Their so-called chemistry was based solely on looks, not what really counts. All Zara talked about was how cute Nick was. *groan* As for Nick, he was a flawless hunk whose only goal in life was to protect Zara. Ha ha, sound familiar?

The Believability - Okay, I know it's a story about Pixies and Weres, but come on! The author could have made it at least a little bit believable. Everyone was so calm about finding out the pixies and weres actually existed. If I moved to a new town and some people I barely knew told me these types of things existed, I would contact a mental institute. Zara was just like, "Pixies? Like, no way. Like, they actually exist? I totally believe you." Everyone was so.. matter-of-fact. It was annoying. Obviously this was done to bypass the time needed to create an exceptional novel. This book, if you can ever call it that, was a money maker and nothing else. The author did not write to selflessly put her imaginary world on paper, she wrote to exploit this generation's young adults and cash in a huge profit.

The Dialogue - Forced and lacked meaning. The entire dialogue was full of bad sarcasm, stupid comments/questions and cheap romance. Need I explain more?

Positive Elements:
The Phobias - The ONLY thing I enjoyed about this book was Zara's hobby - chanting all the phobias. Every chapter was titled a phobia, and Zara was constantly describing them. I enjoyed reading them and finding out what they meant. I especially loved the long ones that I couldn't pronounce.


All in all,
I found this book to be a waste of time, and I don't recommend it to anyone. Feel free to disagree with me, but this is one of the worst books I've ever read. I hated how the not-so-evil villains acted and how all the females were portrayed as useless damsels. It was uncomfortable and uninteresting. Read it if you dare. ;)