Razorbill
July 30, 2013
388 pages
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(Review may contain some spoilers)
She's now living across the country with every aspect of her old life behind her when she starts to, literally, see a boy. He's no one she knows, but she feels inexplicably drawn to him. On a near desperate quest for answers about the boy and other strange things that start to happen, Tavia starts to question everything -- including her aunt and uncle, the plane crash that brought her to them and whether she was the intended victim.
On the run now, from just who she's still not sure, Tavia heads to the town in Maine where the mysterious boy told her to go.
As Tavia uncovers more and puts herself more in danger, she continues to feel impossibly torn between the boy she can't explain and the one who's always there for her, even still, her best friend and crush, Benson.
Earthbound was a strange read for me. It started out really slow and took a while for me to get into it. I kept waiting for more . . . more drama, more danger, more romance, just more.
The story surrounding Tavia was interesting enough to keep me reading. Things moved into the 'paranormal' realm rather quickly, or perhaps it was just how well the characters took the developments. For characters living an ordinary, mundane human existence these magical, not-ordinary things should be more than, "Oh, hunh, that's interesting. We can deal." Yet, that seemed to be the reaction. I don't need breakdowns or major freakouts but something would have been better than the blase, almost non-reactions.
Which goes along with my other issue with the novel. I was sure that a character was going to turn out how they did from all but the beginning of the novel due to their reactions. Hints in Earthbound are not subtle. From characters reactions to plot developments, 'little hints' are actually rather big and heavy handed, you can guess a lot of things early on.
Yet, I only partially understood the whole mythos (and quarreling) between the different factions. Some of the 'what' maybe but not much of the 'why.'
The love triangle isn't really a triangle as one character is present and we're 'shown' that character and the other we only get 'told' of Tavia's feelings about them. It wasn't very equal.
Quinn, the boy she begins to see, though, did remind me the tiniest bit of Caspian from Jessica Verday's <a href="http://book-splot.blogspot.com/2010/11/hollow-jessica-verday-review.html">The Hollow</a>.
Despite all of the issues I seem to have with this book (it does seem like a lot when I write it out, no?), it is very readable. Once you get into the story, it's one that will keep you turning the pages.
Rating: 5/10
arc received from publisher through LibraryThing's ER program
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