Saturday, October 29, 2016

Crown Review #1 - Wake

Wake by Lisa McMann


Rating: 3.7/5 Stars
Series: Wake Series, #1
Length: 210 Pages
Purchase: [Amazon] | [Barnes & Noble]

Synopsis:
For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people's dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie's seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime.
She can't tell anybody about what she does they'd never believe her, or worse, they'd think she's a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn't want and can’t control.
Then she falls into a gruesome nightmare, one that chills her to the bone. For the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else's twisted psyche. She is a participant.





I first came across Lisa McMann from reading her series, The Unwanteds. I loved the series so much, that I usually go through her other books and check them out. While most of the other books didn’t catch my attention, Wake kept tugging my attention, but I kept pushing it off. I wasn’t sure so sure about it, but I never made a choice just yet. I never added the book to my list just yet either, until one day I came across it in a thrift store. Seeing that the price was practically free (ok about $3), I finally gave the book a chance and took it off the shelf.

After reading, I was surprised in my several reactions. At first, on the first page, I almost dropped the book and called it done. I immediately did not like the style of the writing as I was not used to the specific style used. If I had to describe it, I would say it was almost a playwright or a script-like style, but without the names starting at every line, or actions in parentheses. However, I was still going to give this book a chance.

The fact that is book was very fast paced, I was shocked. I think this was the only reason I decided to keep reading. As I kept reading, I started to enjoy the book. The idea caught my attention, and thinking about dreams wanted me to read (and learn) even more. At some points of the book, I wish there was more details, as I felt some things were jumped. For example, something was said and I had to stop and turn a few pages back because I didn’t remember reading anything leading up to it. Some of these parts I found in the pages, some I didn’t. There were also parts that I felt vague. This was mostly with the parts that I couldn’t find when something happened all of sudden, but nothing was explained afterwards. It left me confused, but it would seem to solve itself out later in the book (and not in the same chapter).

Even when the book is focused on a girl experiencing something with dreams, I wished that there was more parts with this idea. There was enough details about it, but I wanted more. The dreams were even tied with the dreams, but I wanted dreams alone, and not with the relationships. However, I didn’t let this opinion affect my choice that much.

Even though some of the writing felt limited, I was able to understand the full story by the end, even when I said some details were left out. Since my thoughts about this book was so mixed, I ended up giving the book a rating of 3.7 stars. I felt it was better than 3.5 Stars, but not as good as 4 Stars. Due to the rating system here, I gave it the benefit of 4 Stars. 


At the end, most the reviews I’ve seen here are mixed, mostly between 3 and 4 stars. After my review, I believe most of the reviews are agreeable.



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