Book Blurb:
Her mission is to get close to him for inside information.
His mission is to kidnap her for a supernatural militant group.
Recruited in her teens for a life of espionage, Julia Caldwell, now 19, is the youngest CIA agent on record. Her mission is simple: get close to Cole Thomas for intel on his father, a known and dangerous weapons dealer. As she grows closer to Cole, something is off. He might not be who she thinks he is. And worse, his mission will put an end to hers.
Always believing the government’s story that her purpose in life was to keep the world safe, Julia doesn’t know who to trust or who to believe. But now, THE SWAY has a different story—a different purpose for her—that goes well beyond all she ever imagined.
My Review:
3 Out Of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery, Supernatural, Suspense, Teen--
Julia was part of a group of children raised and trained by the CIA to be covert agents by the time they are older teens. Now that she is on her first solo mission, she refuses to fail and let others think she is too young. But soon things get complicated and even her training can’t prepare her for what is to come.
I was instantly into this book when I first started reading. And then my interest started to fizzle out. There were a lot of things that did not compute well in my brain, or inconsistencies that kept popping up. I am like an elephant and never forget, so when something is mentioned, my brain catalogs it. So that means, it has to always stay that way and you can’t throw conflicting info out at me because it will eat away at me and I will get angry at the book. Needless to say, that happened here a few times. There were some inconsistencies that made it hard for me to follow as well as some random plot changes that were strange. I was expecting a really cool spy book with a kick ass teen girl, and instead I got an emotional girl who becomes part of a group (school?) for super heroes who must save the world from over the top evil villains while being madly in love with a boy she has only actually known for a week. I was really into the real life secret agent thing, and the book lost me a little bit when it went down the unexpected path of super powers. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love me some supernatural books, but I don’t feel like this was developed enough for my tastes. There was so much info thrown at me and so many plot twists in such a short amount of pages. I feel like the book should have either been longer to fully develop the massive amount of characters/world/supernatural/secret organizations, or some of this stuff should have been left out, either for the next book in the series or just completely.
Julia is this skilled, highly trained agent who was recruited when she was 13 to serve her country and gave it her all. But then that persona fell apart once her target gave her attention and she turned into this odd, incompetent girl that I really did not like. At one point, the evil doer calls her by her real name and then like a paragraph later she thinks that he doesn’t know who she is and to keep pretending to be normal. What? Either she is stupid, or the writer kinda made her look that way. I am sure that nobody else cares about this, but she was 19, which developmentally is a grown woman. Her love interest was a 17 year old boy, who may have been pretty, but is still just a child. Add in the fact that she was never allowed to have a relationship, and she is instantly in love and living with said man-child. What happened to getting your own space and learning who you really are as a person without someone else to take care of you/shape you? I felt like she cared more about being a girlfriend to someone she found incredibly attractive than saving the world/finding answers. Also, she blushes a ton over everything, yet previously mentioned that she is not modest anymore due to her training and lack of privacy. I feel like those two facts don’t mesh. And lastly, for someone who has had such amazing training, why did she do so many stupid things, things that even I know were terrible and I have had no agent training? (I also find it strange that the supernaturals mate for life and know instantly who their mates are- I am holding out for her to have a different age appropriate partner who I will not name here in case of spoilers). There was one part where Julia had a huge revelation dropped in her lap and then is told to swear allegiance to this new group that basically kidnapped her and literally told her nothing about who they are or what they want. She rightly doesn’t and people are disappointed in her- I was so confused as to why anyone in their right mind would swear allegiance to random kidnappers.
I felt like the book was too much info in too short a story that it overwhelmed me and was not fully developed. That being said, I would like to read the next book in the series to see what will happen next and maybe the writing will evolve as well. I really feel like someone else will really like this book, I think maybe I was just expecting something else.
I received this title from the publisher in return for my honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment