Teardrop by Lauren Kate

Teardrop (Teardrop Trilogy, #1)

by Lauren Kate

An epic saga of heart-stopping romance, devastating secrets, and dark magic . . . a world where everything you love can be washed away. The first book in the new series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Fallen series

Never, ever cry. . . . Eureka Boudreaux's mother drilled that rule into her daughter years ago. But now her mother is gone, and everywhere Eureka goes he is there: Ander, the tall, pale blond boy who seems to know things he shouldn't, who tells Eureka she is in grave danger, who comes closer to making her cry than anyone has before.

But Ander doesn't know Eureka's darkest secret: ever since her mother drowned in a freak accident, Eureka wishes she were dead, too. She has little left that she cares about, just her oldest friend, Brooks, and a strange inheritance—a locket, a letter, a mysterious stone, and an ancient book no one understands. The book contains a haunting tale about a girl who got her heart broken and cried an entire continent into the sea. Eureka is about to discover that the ancient tale is more than a story, that Ander might be telling the truth . . . and that her life has far darker undercurrents than she ever imagined.

Reviewed by Jo on

2 of 5 stars

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Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Having loved the Fallen Series over all, despite being disappointed with the last book, I just had to read Teardrop. However, my overall feelings are pretty "meh".

I've never read anything about Atlantis before, and apart from playing the computer game India Jones and the Fate of Atlantis so many years ago that I don't remember much about it, I know nothing about the legend. So I was coming to Teardrop blind, with no expectations. What the book did is whet my appetite for the actual legend, which I'll probably look up at some point, but otherwise, it's a lot like Fallen. By which I mean, you don't really get any answers in this book at all.

There's the ancient tale mentioned above, which Eureka reads in The Book of Love, the story of how Atlantis was flooded, which was left to Eureka in her mother's will. And you discover that Eureka is somehow related to the story. But by the end of the book... we know a few things, that I won't give spoilers about, but they seem hardly worth the length of the book. Seriously, with what we discovered, I don't know why Teardrop is as long as it is. It takes so long for Eureka to ask the right questions, or suspect much of anything. And some of the answers are really quite predictable; you might not know exactly what's happened, but you have an idea. When you know something 200 pages before Eureka does, her cluelessness can cause many an eye-roll. Sure, Kate has a talent for writing a gripping tale you can't put down, desperate to find out the answers to all your why's, but when you get to the end and you're still none the wiser, it's damn frustrating!

It was ok with the Fallen series, because it was her first series, and it seemed exciting and original. But if Kate is going to continue the same formula of revealing nothing for several books, then I'm not sure I see the point in reading them. I am intrigued by the story of Atlantis, and I'm intrigued to see where the story will go after the ending of Teardrop, but if the next book in the series continues to reveal nothing, I think I'm going to give up. I can't be doing with being kept hanging on for years on end. Give us something in the sequel, Kate, please! Otherwise, what's the point in me continuing?

Thank you to Random House Children's Publisher's for the review copy.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 15 January, 2014: Finished reading
  • 15 January, 2014: Reviewed