Review: Betwixt by Tara Bray Smith

Betwixt by Tara Bray Smith
My rating: 1.5 of 5 genies
Genre: YA+ Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Dark
Published: January 1, 2009
Pages: 512
Publisher: Little, Brown Books For Young Readers
Source: Purchased
Format: Paperback
Purchase At: TheBookDepository.com or Amazon.com

Goodreads Summary

For three teenagers, dark mystery has always lurked at the corner of the eyes and the edge of sleep. Beautiful Morgan D'Amici wakes in her trailerpark home with dirt and blood under her fingernails. Paintings come alive under Ondine Mason's violet-eyed gaze. Haunted runaway Nix Saint-Michael sees halos of light around people about to die.

At a secret summer rave in the woods, the three teenagers learn of their true, changeling nature and their uncertain, intertwined destinies. Riveting, unflinching, beautiful, Betwixt shows a magic as complex and challenging as any ordinary reality.

My Thoughts

Creepy does not even come close to describing this book. I wanted to like it, and even put in an honest effort into reading the first couple chapters, however it royally sucked. The characters were all so trashy and the author's attempt at making them seem different from every other YA Paranormal stereo-type really didn't come across very well.

Many of the people featured in this book have serious issues and I could never get into it because of how unrelatable the characters were to me. The guys have issues, the girls need to learnt that skanky behavior is not in. All of them should see someone about the possible STD's contracted during one of their ridiculously skeevy parties and Smith needs to learn that twisted literature like this is NOT Y. A. It is mature. Trying to make a quick buck by marketing the book out to "Fans of Twilight" is a technique that is getting pretty old for me fast, and especially when the content boarders highly on being a little too adult.

I enjoyed the cover and thought that it was pretty for a while - hence why I bought it - but eventually the compounded weirdness of everyone just grew too much to handle. This book is weird. Save yourself the money, I kind of regret now that I didn't. The only thing going for this book is the creativeness of its concept, I have never seen anything like this before. If you want something different, a little bit startling, and do not mind the tad slowness in terms of pace, this book could work better for you. It just didn't do it at all for me.

Verdict: Something saved this book from completely sucking. Otherwise, it would be forgettable at the very best, and yet, there were redeemable qualities somewhere.