Thursday, August 11, 2011

Wildefire by Karsten Knight



Title/Author: Wildefire by Karsten Knight
Publisher/Date published: Simon & Schuster, July 26th 2011
How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley

Goodreads summary: "Every flame begins with a spark.
Ashline Wilde is having a rough sophomore year. She’s struggling to find her place as the only Polynesian girl in school, her boyfriend just cheated on her, and now her runaway sister, Eve, has decided to barge back into her life. When Eve’s violent behavior escalates and she does the unthinkable, Ash transfers to a remote private school nestled in California’s redwoods, hoping to put the tragedy behind her. But her fresh start at Blackwood Academy doesn’t go as planned. Just as Ash is beginning to enjoy the perks of her new school — being captain of the tennis team, a steamy romance with a hot, local park ranger — Ash discovers that a group of gods and goddesses have mysteriously enrolled at Blackwood... and she’s one of them. To make matters worse, Eve has resurfaced to haunt Ash, and she’s got some strange abilities of her own. With a war between the gods looming over campus, Ash must master the new fire smoldering within before she clashes with her sister one more time... And when warm and cold fronts collide, there’s guaranteed to be a storm."

This was far darker than I would have expected. I mean, really, there's absolutely no warm and fuzzy in there. And I know the gods and goddesses of old weren't exactly known for their cuddly features, but still, these are reincarnated in teenagers, I expected something else.

Right at the beginning I felt like I'd somehow skipped the first 50 pages or something. We're thrown right into the action and because I didn't care about the characters yet, I didn't really care what happened either. And for me this didn't really get better throughout the book.

Ashline is really strong and really weak at the same time. I wanted to kick her and tell her to man up a lot of times while reading this book. She seemed a bit shallow to me, her choice in guys seemed to be determined by how good they looked and not what their personality was like. I couldn't connect with her for some reason.

The antagonist, Eve (Ashline's sister), is just plain EVIL! I mean, wow! And seemingly with no reason, I always appreciate it when the bad guy has a motive and I felt this was lacking here.

Some of the scenes towards the ending were very shocking and I hadn't expected what happened to Rolfe. I liked Rolfe. And well, yeah, I kind of did expect the whole cliffhanger thing, because there'd been hints throughout the book to it. Especially when something that should have been there was obviously missing (I'm not making sense if you haven't read the book, I know, but I don't want to be spoilery).

I did like the whole concept of gods being reincarnated as teenagers and the creepy beings that sort of try to keep them in check, or maybe try to destroy them, who knows. It's all really mysterious at this point. I'm not sure if I will continue on with the next book, but maybe I'll give it a try since I have so many unanswered questions!

My rating: 2 stars

3 comments:

  1. I felt exactly the same as you...no reason to care for the characters so really all that was left was the fighting scenes which is not my thing :(

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  2. I'm in the middle of this one right now. I am on the fence about it so far. I do agree that its a lil on the violent side, but I do like a good ass kicking :) I will finish this soon and let ya know what I think!

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  3. You're not the only one who didn't love this book. I started reading it, but soon gave up. For some reason, I quickly lost interest in the characters and also felt a lot of the battle scenes were unnecessary. There to just be there, I guess.

    I've felt so alone for so long b/c so many people love this book. Phew, glad not to be alone. Thank you for the honest review!

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