Mystic City (Mystic City Trilogy, #1)

by Theo Lawrence

[ladygrey]

I'm torn between 2 and 3 stars. It's not a bad book. It's a unique world with mildly interesting characters and it's not badly written, exactly.

I had a hard time getting into the story in the beginning. There's a lot of world building early on and a heroine who has lost her memory so the first 50 pages is a whole lot of telling. Without any intrigue.

The problem with that is, it's set up as something of a mystery. The heroine has lost her memory and there's all these odd things happening but everything is incredibly obvious within the first 5 pages. So, there's really no investment in a story unfolding when I already know what's going on - I'm just waiting for it to hurry up and reveal the obvious.

And in the midst of that the heroine is not that interesting or strong. She's actually kind of lame. Even though she's lost her memories she just accepts everything her family tells her. "I feel nothing for this guy but my parents tell me I love him so I must be wrong." Never mind that what she's lost is her defiance of her parents and that she harbors a completely different world view than them. So, accepting what they say over her own instincts is completely out of character. And she doesn't even ask the right questions. It's all, "We had this huge secret affair, why don't I feel anything." When the real logical question is, "We had this huge secret affair and he still has all his memories. Why doesn't he act like he feels anything?"

There's a lot of descriptions of what everyone's wearing (all the guys where shirts that are tight and show off their muscles or suits. and all the girls always wear skirts or dresses) and what everyone's eating in surprising detail.

Eventually the obvious comes to light (shocking!) and then the story actually starts to turn into something. I mean, a lot of action something and then it's over. But Aria gets stronger as a heroine and more interesting. And Hunter and Turk are both pretty good characters throughout.

There are other decent characters and some not entirely surprising twists. I can't decide if I like the world enough to see where it goes in the next story. Hopefully the next book won't be so blatantly Romeo & Juliet (though admittedly so). And the whole concepts of mystics was interesting and integrated into their world well. I'm just not sure if that's enough to carry into the sequel...

ETA: and the answer to that question is no. I just read the synopsis for the next book and I will never understand how authors think ripping apart the hero and heroine in the second book is a good idea. Ever. You destroy the only reason I enjoy yours books and that sounds like a good plan? No.