"For a moment, I'm just Daire - a girl straddled between two bloodlines. One I was given - one I must earn." (Daire Santos)
I’ve read two books from Alyson Noel’s Evermore series and I didn’t enjoy them at all. When I saw the gorgeous cover of Fated in my school library, I stared at it for a whole minute and the shallow part of my brain (the one that judges a book by its cover) decided that I was going to take this book out.
The first thing that I decided to do in this review is show some MAJOR LOVE for the gorgeous front and back cover and the illustrations for each chapter. I loved the idea of the Raven’s stemming from the models hair in the back cover. I felt that they were so fitting when it came to the story.
Fated had some serious pacing problems. This book took me more than a month to read. I would read the book, get bored, put it down and then pick it up when I had nothing else to do. This book started off with a tortoise pace, got interesting, got really boring and the whole process kept on repeating itself. The plot was almost non-existent and this novel took up more pages than it was supposed to. I was elated to finally complete this book!
I feel as though I don’t know where I stand with anything in his book because it wasn’t explained enough, or I didn’t understand things well enough. The main character is Daire Santos. She starts to see things that aren’t really there and she goes to a grandmother that she has never met before in order to “fix” her insanity. Here she learns her destiny. She comes from a long line of Soul Seekers. After completing this book, I feel neutral about Daire, but I do feel that she did grow as a character.
Due to the Evermore series (Alyson Noël's previous book),I expected a bunch of insta-love romance between Daire and Dace. Luckily, that wasn’t the case. The romance in this book is overshadowed by the non-existent plot and the pacing problems that existed throughout this book. I’m currently wondering whether that was a blessing in disguise. I also don’t know how I feel about the romance, except for the fact that Dace seems too good to be true and that …uhm… yeah… that’s about it.
The setting of the book was really amazing. Its set in Enchantment, New Mexico and from the way that the story is written, I could see that Noel put in plenty of research to make this part off the book as realistic as possible. I also loved the concept of the spirit animals,the vision quests, the elements and the souls. I feel that this idea had potential and if it was expanded upon, the book would have been a success for me.
My expectations for the book was extremely low, so in that regard, this book kind of exceeded my expectations. I’m going to pick up the next book because the whole Echo thing sounds intriguing. But after a month of struggling through this book, I’m glad to say that it is over.