Abandon (The Abandon Trilogy, #1)

by Meg Cabot

Last year, Pierce died - just for a moment. And when she was in the space between life and death, she met John: tall dark and terrifying, it’s his job to usher souls from one realm to the next.

There’s a fierce attraction between them, but Pierce knows that if she allows herself to fall for John she will be doomed to a life of shadows and loneliness in the underworld. But now things are getting dangerous for her, and her only hope is to do exactly what John says . . .

• ISBN10: 0330453858
• ISBN13: 9780330453851
• Publish Date: 2 September 2011 (first published 1 April 2011)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 27 June 2013
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Macmillan Children's Books
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

"I already knew what it was like to sink.
I decided I might as well swim."
(Pierce Oliviera)

Grade Eight me is hating the present day me right now! When I read Abandon in Grade Eight, I loved it. Loved it so much that I re-read it that same year. Loved it so much that I borrowed it to all my friends. Loved it so much that I would have rated it five stars without thinking about it. 6 years later... Not so much!

After reading the Everneath series, I was looking for another paranormal romance series that is influenced by Mythology. It was then that I remembered Abandon, which is a retelling of the Greek Myth of Hades and Persephone.

Pierce, the main character of Abandon is the type of character that I rarely like. I expect Meg Cabot's main characters to be dramatic, hilarious and relatable, but Pierce is such a Mary Sue. She's beautiful, caring towards people and animals and has a need to fix everything and everyone. She is also naive and dense. She thinks money can solve every problem and does stupid things without thinking. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Pierce lives in a little bubble and is oblivious to everything that's going on around her.

Pierce's stupidity is shown mostly through her interactions with her love interest, John. When Pierce meets John in the cemetery she's scared of him and she has good reasons to be fearful. The guy almost forced her to spend eternity with him in the Underworld, follows Pierce everywhere and kills people. Instead of running away from John, she starts a conversation with him, continually describes the colour of his eyes and is physically attracted to him.

Yes, Pierce falls for a moody stalker and murderer with anger issues and violent tendencies. The fact that he's an attractive member of the Underworld and probably has a tragic backstory doesn't excuse his behaviour. There's also INSTA-LOVE! YAY! Out of all the books with insta-love that I've read, there's only one book where it works and that book is not Abandon. Before Pierce moves to Isla Huesos, she has four interactions with John and those interactions are brief and antagonistic. And then a day after another antagonistic conversation at the cemetery, Pierce and John are smooching and proclaiming their love for each other.

I love Meg Cabot. Most of her series are easy to read and they make me laugh. But aside from The Mediator series and the Vanished series, I haven't really enjoyed her paranormal books.

"It's only in fairytales that princesses can afford to wait for the handsome prince to save them. In real life, they have to bust out of their own coffins and do the saving themselves." (Pierce Oliviera)

[stefu1]

It was a little slow (read: a lot) and really confusing to read. there should be a better transition between the flash backs and the present. Nothing made sense. I wish it were in chronological order or something. Super confused about the furies thing (I think there's supposed to be only 3 but the books hints that they are more). Buuuuuut, I like John.

[Kelsey D]

a lot of people seem to find this a bad read. Personally, I enjoyed it. It was a fast read. However, when I picked it up, I didn't realize it was a trilogy, so now I'm torn between having the 2nd one sent to my Kindle so I don't have to wait and having a trilogy all in hard copy. GRRR.

[Angie]

I didn't know anything about Abandon when I first picked it up, but when I learned that it was a retelling of Hades and Persephone, I got really excited. I loved Everneath, another book based on this myth, so I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed by it. Pierce died when she was 15, and was brought back, but not before entering the Underworld. John, a death deity, that she had met as a child, wants to keep her there with him, but she escapes. Now, two years later she's back to where it all started. The Furies are after her, and John wants to bring her back with him in order to protect her. Pierce just wants to make a new start and get on with her life.

Abandon has a very narrow time span. The first 100 pages all take place on one day. No, I'm not joking. This works for some books, but not for this one, since nothing happens. It was one very long, uneventful day. Well, there are some flashbacks, but still, a third of the book happens on the same day. I was super confused almost the whole time. I just did not get what was going on, and felt that the story was very strange. Why does Pierce keep apologizing to John? Why is John so pissed off? How did she get away from him the day she died? What's the deal with the necklace? What are these "incidents" that John keeps saving her from? I felt like I was jumping into the middle of the series despite this being the first book!

I just have to wonder, why doesn't Abandon start with Pierce's accident, or even the events that led to her getting kicked out of school? There's more than enough flashbacks that the author could have rearranged the chapters a bit and given us the story in chronological order. I normally don't mind flashbacks, but there's so many of them, and they're mostly full chapters. Nearly the entire middle third is made up of flashbacks. It made the story feel disjointed and added to my confusion about the plot. Even by page 260ish, I still had no clue what the plot was. But it was also only the second day of the story. Another long, uneventful day. Things did start to pick up around that point though, thankfully.

Abandon was a weird one for me. Nothing happens at all for over 200 pages, and then everything just kind of happens all at once in the last few pages. I liked the twist on the mythology, but the plot was super boring, if you can even call two days of nothing a plot. I am curious about what the Underworld will bring for Pierce though.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[elysium]

Pierce moves to Isla Huesos with her mom after her parent’s divorce and Pierce’s near death experience. One day she was trying to save a bird and ended up in a pool and hitting her head. While dead she ends up in a mysterious world where she meets this gorgeous boy John. After John explains that she has to stay in that world, Pierce panicked and escaped. But now John has appeared at Pierce’s new school and weird things are happening.

I’ve heard lot about Cabot’s books and I was curious to try this.
I liked the idea of Underworld and Persephone and all but it ended being just flat. I didn’t feel any chemistry between Pierce and John but gladly there was no love triangle. Can’t say the same about insta-love though. Can’t blame Pierce bolting after you hear you’re dead and you’re supposed to live there with this guy you met once when you were 7 years old.

I wasn’t too crazy about Pierce either who was too annoying and whiny but the book was rather enjoyable but I don’t see the hype over Cabot’s books.

[ibeforem]

I’m not going to write much about this book because really, it wasn’t very good. Most of the book meandered along with very little plot whatsoever, other than to listen to Pierce whine and give us drips and drabs of her past that for some reason has to be kept secret from us for so very long. She spends most of her time trying to avoid John, the angel/whatever, until suddenly she’s not avoiding him any longer, she’s making out with him. All of the characters are either boring or blatant stereotypes. This is supposed to be a dark retelling of the Hades & Persephone myth, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it based on this book. Needless to say, I won’t be bothering with the rest of the trilogy.

[lizarodz]

Abandon is the first book by Meg Cabot that I’ve read. I know you must be wondering under what rock I’ve been hiding all this time and honestly I don’t know why I didn’t try one before (I love the Princes Diaries movies ) I don’t know what I was expecting, but Abandon was just okay for me.

It wasn’t very easy for me to identify with Pierce; she was a little too whiny for my taste. I do understand why she acted this way, but to be honest (as my 11 year old “B” pointed to me while listening to the book in the car) if I died and were given a second chance I would be thankful and try to make a difference for others. Pierce has a convoluted sense of right and wrong and can’t seem to trust her parents or anyone else for that matter. I loved John, even though he was rarely in the book at all, which was very disappointing. Other characters, such as Pierce’s mom, her grandmother, Alex, and her uncle Chris, take a second place to Pierce and all her angst.

The plot was very thin for me. I know this is the first book in a trilogy, but it felt like nothing really happened. The writing was beautiful and lyrical, but I have an issue with the cryptic ending of the chapters (phrases like “little did I know that it would happen next”) and with all the flashbacks. I was getting dizzy trying to put together the story in my head while listening to the audiobook.

I am not completely disappointed in the book; I do love mythology, especially Greek mythology. I have high hopes that the next book, (Underworld, to on May of next year) will have more “meat” and something significant will happen, especially since it ended so abruptly with so many unresolved issues.

About the cover: The cover is beautiful; I like the flowers and swirls around the cover and the impression of “abandon” of Pierce.

[anne]

Usual Meg Cabot fare. Light hearted angel/near death experience fantasy. Main man is not nice to geckos-which is an issue for me, and I don't like gecko's-well the non-Australian ones anyway. And the character development of Tim and Jade was a bit distant for me, but still an enjoyable book. I would have given it 4 except for the gecko.

[Jo]

I hadn't read any Meg Cabot before picking up this novel, but as it sounded right up my street, I thought I'd give a go and see why people love her novels so much. I was expecting to be wowed, I was expecting to be blown away. The truth is, I didn't get any of those things. I was hugely disappointed.

Nothing happened in this book until half way through. The first half was mostly showing Pierce feelings over now living in Isla Huesos, and all these different events that happened in the past, like what happened when she died, and various other big events. This wouldn't be so bad if we were told everything at once, but we aren't. We're given dribbles and trickles, never fully finding out what happened at each event until you reach the middle, and in my opinion, it wasted a lot of pages and time. It wasn't as exciting, because we already knew it was all in the past, so she didn't die permanently, or end up seriously injured, so there was no suspence, it was just finding out what happened, and it took so long.

Then things finally get moving... except, they don't really. It's full of things that you think will be subplots - a banned high school tradition, animosity between Pierce's cousin, Alex, and the popular kids - but they never amount to anything. They may be continued in the next book, but I don't see any point as they're so inconsequential to the main story. All that's really interesting is a conversation Pierce has with a cemetary Sexton, where you finally start finding things out, but nothing major really happens until the last 20 pages.

The whole story just dragged for me, unfortunately. It was very much the first book in a series, just setting everything up - but I've since been told by a Cabot fan that that's what all her fisrt books are pretty much like, so I guess die-hard Cabot fans will still enjoy it. But I have to say I was bored quite a lot of the way through, and in my opinion, a lot of it could be cut out, and it would be snappier and more interesting as a novella. There is potential for it to get better though, and I'm undecided on whether or not I will read the sequel, Underworld, when it's released next year. We'll see.

From Once Upon a Bookcase - YA book blog

[Artemis]

The idea behind this series was great - I'm a sucker for a good greek myth retelling. I think it could have been executed a bit better, especially concerning some of the dialogue. Don't know how this will play out as a trilogy.