Fated by Alyson Noël

Publisher's summary: Strange things are happening to Daire Santos. Crows mock her, glowing people stalk her, time stops without warning, and a beautiful boy with unearthly blue eyes haunts all her dreams. Fearing for her daughter’s sanity, Daire’s mother sends her to live with the grandmother she’s never met. A woman who recognizes the visions for what they truly are—the call to her destiny as a Soul Seeker—one who can navigate the worlds between the living and dead.

There on the dusty plains of Enchantment, New Mexico, Daire sets out to harness her mystical powers. But it’s when she meets Dace, the boy from her dreams, that her whole world is shaken to its core. Now Daire is forced to discover if Dace is the one guy she's meant to be with...or if he’s allied with the enemy she's destined to destroy.

My take: I’m struggling with my feelings about this one. I think that I would have to say that it was just OK because, as I sit here and try to think about my thoughts while reading Fated, the things that I didn’t like or that bothered me heavily outweighed the things that I liked.

Before I start to blabber about all the things that bothered me, I want to talk about the things I liked. I have to say that I actually really like Alyson Noël’s writing style; her writing is very smooth and compelling. There were also a lot of really unique and amazing scenes that painted very vivid images in my mind, and those I really liked…in particular, one scene that introduces us to the bone collector.

Now on to the things I didn’t really like. While I was listening to the audio of Fated, I wondered if I wasn’t really getting into the story because of the narrator’s voice and reading style, but the more I listened, the more I realized that the story just wasn’t really intriguing me.

The prologue, for one thing, is something that stands out where I thought, “What the heck was that? I didn’t know, nor did I even care to know, what the heck was trying to be said there. Then, throughout the story, I felt like I was reading (listening) to a lot of inspirational speeches. There was also way too much repetitiveness when describing the differences between the two twins, but the repetitiveness probably stood out more just because I was listening to the book instead of reading it.

The last thing I want to mention that bothered me is that there were a lot of missing holes in the story. And the things that I think I would have liked reading about were also missing. For example, when Daire’s grandmother finally convinces her to learn about her power, there’s a period of time that’s totally skipped. Then, when Daire is entering her new school and talking about how she could basically destroy these new bullies with her power, I was left wondering, “What the heck did she actually learn to do with her powers?”

I don’t think that this was a horrible book, and I do believe that there are probably a lot of people who will like it. This is just not something for me.