Awaken (The Abandon Trilogy, #3)

by Meg Cabot

Following Abandon and Underworld, Awaken is the final part to Meg Cabot's breathtakingly passionate The Abandon Trilogy.

Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera knew that by accepting the undying love of John Hayden she'd be forced to live forever in the one place she's always dreaded most: the Underworld. The sacrifice seemed worth it, but now her happiness and safety in the realm are threatened. The Furies have discovered that John has broken one of their strictest rules and revived a dead soul. If the balance of life and death isn't restored, both the Underworld and Pierce's home on Earth will be wiped out by the Furies' wrath. Pierce has already cheated death once . . . can she do it again?

• ISBN10: 144721787X
• ISBN13: 9781447217879
• Publish Date: 26 September 2013 (first published 2 July 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Macmillan Children's Books
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

"And, this time, when the storm comes, instead of running from it, I'm going to face it head-on." (Pierce Oliviera)

THE GOOD FATES
⛴ Awaken is the only book in the Abandon series that resembles something that Meg Cabot would write. There's drama, over-the-top unrealistic and awkward moments, fun characters and hilarity.
⛴ Things happen! And yes, I'm going to ignore that the plot starts after 50 or so pages of pointlessness.
⛴ Kayla, who is way more interesting than Pierce.

THE EVIL FURIES
⛴ The Abandon series span over 6-7 days and could have easily been a standalone.
⛴ The insta-lovey relationship between John and Pierce.
⛴ There's a bunch of plot points in Awaken that spring up out of the blue and aren't even mentioned in Abandon and Underworld
⛴ Pierce is supposedly the Queen of the Underworld, but her knowledge of Greek Mythology is extremely limited. After she had a NDE and found out that the Underworld existed, I expected her to read up and find out more about it.
⛴ Pierce doesn't check her necklace, that's supposed to protect her, until she's in the midst of danger and it's too late.
⛴ The final battle against the Furies is anti-climatic.
⛴ Pierce and John making-out while they are in the middle of danger.
⛴ Also, who has conversations in the middle of a life and death battle?!?!? It destroys any feelings of impending doom.

"Time heals all wounds, you know, Miss Oliviera, even in this place." (Mr Graves)

[reveriesociety_]

I skipped most of it. John's overpotectiveness got on my nerves, and the narrative kept being continously itnerrupted by too much of Pierce's thoughts. It was jarring, and I just couldn't focus on the actual story.

[lizarodz]

4.5 stars

Even though I wasn’t impressed with Abandon,, the first book of the trilogy, I’m glad I continue reading because it did get better and better. Awaken a pretty good conclusion to the series.

Awaken starts right after the end of Underworld and finds Pierce helping John with his work in the Underworld and of course, the furies have not given up in making their life hell (pun intended). Pierce and John continue to be very much in love and even though they have to deal with a lot, they stick together and learn about each other in the process. Pierce grew a significantly from the hesitant, whining girl of the first book, into a more confident and powerful young woman. On the other hand, John learned to compromise and taking Pierce’s feelings into account. I love his protectiveness of her.

Alex keeps being annoying, obtuse and egocentric and quite frankly I dislike him to almost the end. I’m glad that something good happened to the poor guy. Kayla is also in the Underworld (temporarily) and seems to be getting along very nicely with Frank, a strapping pirate type guy from John’s crew. Pierce’s parents have a bit of the spotlight in this one and I’m happy that the cat is out of the bag, it makes life a lot simpler (to all the teens reading this, please take note).

I have to say (it’s my civic duty!) that the blub doesn’t do the book justice. The fact that Pierce and John revived a soul is not as significant and prominent as it sounds here. However, someone sort of dies, which was a big unexpected surprise. As it happens often in the series, the dead have a tendency of not staying that way and the problem gets fixed shortly (and thankfully) after. The plot is action packed and full of twists and turns and an overabundance of furies.

The ending was neat and all loose ends were tied. I’m happy with it and I hope that Pierce and John are too :)

A few quotes for you:

“It isn’t funny,” John said. “ You kissed him on purpose just to annoy me. So do you know what I get to do now?” He stopped pacing and pointed to himself. “I get to kiss someone – whoever I want – just to annoy you.” …
“All right,” I whispered, rubbing his hand across my check. “You get one free kiss…whomever you want.”
“What if who I want to kiss is you? he asked.
“ I think that can be arranged,” I said.

“You don’t know my parents,” I said. “I’ve been trying to tell them the truth about you since the day I died and met you, and all it’s gotten me is a lot of appointments with a bunch of shrinks. They are not going to believe the truth about you, and they are not going to let me be with you.”
On the landing, John caught hold of my arm, then turned me around to face him.
“Pierce,” he said, looking down into my eyes and smiling, as he smoothed a dark curl of hair from my forehead. “They can’t stop us from being together. And they will believe you. Because I’m here with you. You’re not alone anymore.”


About the cover: These covers are all beautiful and this one is my favorite. It’s so soft, gentle and projects love.
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[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

This is one of those series that definitely does not get better as it moves along. Awaken was an extremely boring, and kind of pointless, ending to a lackluster series. It was pure curiosity and determination that made me read this conclusion. Mainly, I wanted to know what the heck the plot was! Well, what I thought may have been the plot in the previous book may not have been, and a new plot was revealed in this one. I don’t understand why it took until the third book of a trilogy to have a solid plot, but then again this entire series takes place over the course of a few days. Maybe a week. The Furies are still after John and Pierce, but now there is chaos in the Underworld! What’s causing it? And why was this even added in?!

There wasn’t much that I liked about Awaken–or any of these books, really–but I did kind of enjoy the addition of Thanatos. At least in theory. John dies early on, and of course everyone is freaking out because how does a dead man die?! Well, it turns out that Thanatos, the god of death, actually exists and has his soul. I was kind of excited about this prospect, but then we meet Thanatos and it’s kind of lame. Then everything regarding this is resolved super quickly and as if nothing happened at all. Everyone just moves on. I was majorly disappointed! The author has some really good ideas revolving around this god, but absolutely nothing came of it. In fact, this mini plot makes no sense and doesn’t even add anything to the overall story. It just gives Pierce and her friends something to do during the hurricane.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like Pierce got even more annoying in Awaken. She wasn’t too bad in the previous books, other than declaring her undying love for John after two days and one conversation. For starters, she uses the term “boyfriend” at least 100 times within the first few chapters. We get it, you and John are together! I still find it weird to refer to a 184 year old man as a boy though. Then there’s her obsession with her bird, Hope. Every single time someone mentions hope, as in the feeling, she’s like “Oh, where?!” and starts looking for her bird. She also says “oh” a lot. I rolled my eyes at most of her dialogue. Her cousin, Alex, also got on my nerves. There was way too much of him, but apparently he was important to the plot.

One more thing: the drug storyline involving the Rector’s and Pierce’s mom and uncle was so unnecessary. I thought this in Underworld, but it gets even more ridiculous in Awaken. Who cares if your parents got high 20 years ago and played with some human remains on the beach?! It added nothing to the story except for another eye rolling moment. Why was this included? The Rector family being terrible people had no baring on the story whatsoever. Seriously, I don’t get it.

Awaken was just anticlimactic. A lot of stuff happens over all, but almost none of it was actually relevant to the plot. In fact, I’m still a bit confused as to what the overarching plot was. The Furies coming after Pierce to torture John? The unbalance in the Underworld (which was only introduced in this final book)? Good versus Evil? I have no idea. I will just come out and say it: this series is bad. I do not recommend it. It has some moments that keep it from being dreadful, which is why it gets 2 stars instead of 1. But really, this covers a few days in the life of Pierce Oliviera, in which she falls in insta-love with a death deity, attacks her grandma and other old people with a diamond and a whip, then lives happily ever after.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.