Defy (Defy, #1)

by Sara B. Larson

[ladygrey]

I was going to give Defy 3 stars but when I started thinking through my review there were just too many annoying tropes to justify it. If it hadn't ended with one of them, it might have faired better.

Not that it's a bad book. Once you're about a third of the way through its fairly interesting. Before that, though, there's a lot of first person introspection where more character interaction and dialog would have been more interesting. And lots of repeated information - in case we didn't get it the first time. And lots of unanswered question, which would have been ok except the main character kept pointing them out and asking them over and over which made the whole thing annoying. But the action was good and the plot moved along and when the characters did interact it worked.

Then there's the immediate love triangle. Totally a Twilight love triangle with the boy who is her best friend and has always loved her and the shiny, fancy boy the best friend has to protect her from. There were a few decent lines in the midst of all this, but one romance would have been enough (especially since there really is only one romance and the other totally falls awkwardly flat).

Finally, there's my absolute favorite, "We both love each other and everything's worked out so I need to lie to you to drive you away because we can't be together." ugh.

The thing is, other than all that, it's not an awful book. After the first third I didn't set it aside for another book or feel like hurling it across the airplane. I'll probably read the second one. And the one thing I did like was that it was a little unexpected. Not, you know, the majority of the obvious things like Damien or Iker or anything. But I had Lisbet pegged as his mother and Eljin as his brother. Because those were also the obvious choices and everything else was that apparent.. There were a few times I thought I knew what was going on but when it was revealed it was just enough different to be satisfying. Which almost never happens.

Reread: I can usually tell how much I liked a book by how much I remember about it. This one, I remembered bits and pieces, the bit of context around a few quotes I saved but really... there’s was A LOT I didn’t remember. Especially the ending, which says quite a bit.