Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Halflings (Halflings, #1) by Heather Burch

Halflings (Halflings, #1)Halflings by Heather Burch

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This is a young adult paranormal novel.

Book Summary

After being inexplicably targeted by an evil intent on harming her at any cost, seventeen-year-old Nikki finds herself under the watchful guardianship of three mysterious young men who call themselves halflings. Sworn to defend her, misfits Mace, Raven, and Vine battle to keep Nikki safe while hiding their deepest secret—and the wings that come with.

A growing attraction between Nikki and two of her protectors presents a whole other danger. While she risks a broken heart, Mace and Raven could lose everything, including their souls. As the mysteries behind the boys’ powers, as well as her role in a scientist’s dark plan, unfold, Nikki is faced with choices that will affect the future of an entire race of heavenly beings, as well as the precarious equilibrium of the earthly world.

My Review

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Where to begin? To start off, I really wanted to like this story. There are a lot of good ideas in here. Unfortunately, to me, this book was a soup pot filled with good idea and bad execution.

Nikki is your average paranormal book heroine. She doesn’t believe in her beauty. She is not really a girly girl. And she is generally smart. Not terrible that this is the structure for most paranormal books these days. In fact, I read a number of novels that do well with this base model. Now this author layers on her on touches.

Nikki is an artist, no surprise there. Writers/Authors are creative people and tend to have their heroes and heroines creative people as well. But Nikki also drives a motorcycle. This is new or at least not done a lot. I don’t think it a spoiler to reveal that. Knowing she’s an artist and drives a motorcycle isn’t earth shattering. So that was a good thing.

The problem, I have with Nikki and most of the characters in the book, is the lack of character development. By the end of the book, I really don’t feel like I know her or can relate to her any better. I don’t have to like the main character in the story to enjoy it. But I should feel I understood the reason why they were who they were and how that relates to the story. Nikki was just one dimensional to me. As were the rest of the characters. The character I liked the most was Zero and he played a very minor role, but I found him interesting.

The story started on a bang and really kept moving from there, but I never felt part of the story. The writing was disjointed. At the end of every chapter it felt like you were hunger for a bite of a really good burger, but then the burger is gone and you now have a pencil and paper in your hand. The problem is you have no idea why the burger is gone and what happened to it. Not to mention that you are still starving. It was annoying. This writing style didn’t create a chapter ending cliffhanger to entice you to move to read on. Especially after a few chapters, when you realize that this follows a pattern every time. Just when things get good, we end up at a new place with significant time passage. In fact the timeline is horrible to follow.

I could probably say more, but why beat a dead horse. As I mentioned I received this from the publisher and who knows if I’ll get another book to review after this, but I had to be honest.

On a positive note, like I said, there were a lot of good ideas. The mythology was pretty good. So you might enjoy this one. You don’t have to take my word for it.

My Book Boyfriend if I had to choose would be Mace. But I'll post pics of the other guys too.

Mace
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Raven
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Vine
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