Book Review: Unremembered by Jessica Brody

When Freedom Airlines flight 121 went down over the Pacific Ocean, no one ever expected to find survivors. Which is why the sixteen-year-old girl discovered floating among the wreckage—alive—is making headlines across the globe.

Even more strange is that her body is miraculously unharmed and she has no memories of boarding the plane. She has no memories of her life before the crash. She has no memories period. No one knows how she survived. No one knows why she wasn’t on the passenger manifest. And no one can explain why her DNA and fingerprints can’t be found in a single database in the world.

Her only hope is a strangely alluring boy who claims to know her from before the crash. Who claims they were in love. But can she really trust him? And will he be able to protect her from the people who have been making her forget?*

Review:

When Seraphina wakes up at the site of a plane crash with absolutely no memories, you feel just as confused as she is. What's happening? What's going to happen? Who? What? Where? It's almost overwhelming. 

The mystery of Seraphina pulls you in on the very first page, immediately and suddenly dragging you along into the puzzling case of Seraphina's lost memories. Each page comes with a gasp, a shock, a realization. I discovered things just as Seraphina did, a rare occurrence that always manages to catch me off guard; after all, who likes to be able to guess the end of a book? Zen and Seraphina have a lot of romantic chemistry, but I wish that not all of the romance had happened before the novel began. It left me hungry for more, but also feeling somewhat jipped. Other than that, I have no misgivings with Brody's masterpiece. I can't wait for the next novel in the series! 

The suspense and romance keep the novel going, the heroine keeps the reader cheering, and the pages just won't stop turning. Plot twists and revelations carry Unremembered through to it's mind-blowing end. A must read. 

Grade: A+

*Summary from Goodreads.com

SIMPLY NERDY BOOK REVIEWS

Book Review: The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle

The Beginning of After follows sixteen year old Laurel through the twists and turns her life takes after the sudden death of her parents and younger brother. There's not much else to say in regards to plot; it was a bit slow (it took me a lot of sittings to actually get through it, and I took a few day-long breaks) and didn't really hold my attention.

Character development was ultimately successful, in that I felt as if I understood Laurel by the time that I reached the last page, but her lack of close bonds with many other characters made it difficult to really bond, so to say, with the people surrounding her. The writing was insightful at best, and falsely teenager-like at worst, but I did enjoy the overall tone of the novel.

My greatest misgivings with Castle's novel is possibly that it just wasn't the sort of novel that I was looking to read at the time that I picked it up; those of you who, like me, read all sorts of YA fiction, must also struggle with the transition of going from relatively interesting, otherworldly novels to very realistic, ordinary tales of woe.

All in all, a good novel for readers of realistic fiction, but not the biggest attention-grabber.

Grade: C+

SIMPLY NERDY BOOK REVIEWS