Book: The Summoning

Kelley Armstrong
Young Adult
HarperCollins Publishers / July 2008
Quality Paperback / 390 Pages
Series: Darkest Powers #1

She sees dead people--and they see her.

Chloe Saunders used to have a pretty normal life. But that changed on the day she met her first ghost. Locked up in Lyle House, a group home for troubled teens, she finds out that there's more to the home's teen residents than meets the eye. Will Chloe be able to uncover the dangerous secrets of Lyle House... or will its skeletons come back to haunt her?

I picked this book up because I needed another "para" book for the 999 challenge - and WOW!

What I liked the Most? Kelly Armstrong's world done for YA - it is outrageous

What I liked the Least? She dumbed down her language abit - that was about it. YA today have an entirely different vocabulary than we did growing up.

Review:Mrs Armstrong has created a new series based in the same universe as her Women of the Underworld series, this time for teens, and "The Summoning" is the first book in the series. Now, to be honest this was a slow starter. I'm not going to deny that I picked it up a couple of times before I committed to buying it & did that same little dance at home - do I really wanna "force" myself to read this? I'm really glad I pushed past the first couple of chapters, because the story just came to life.

Review time - the book starts off with Chloe having a nightmare before she wakes up to start her day at the school for the arts and she is just like all the other people in her school, except a little bit of a late bloomer. (This was the draggy part) Chloe is leading a boring life until the day that she gets her first period and she also sees a ghost or rather the ghost sees her - big chase scene through the school by a dead janitor - Chloe is sedated and sent to the hospital and told that she must spend at least two weeks in Lyle House, a group home for unstable teens. At the Lyle House you are introduced to an eccletic bunch of people - some of them are a little a little scary at first, some of them a little bitchy, some of the are friendly.

This is a promising start to a new YA series.


Recommended to: Wow - just about anyone who like YA fiction

Best Quote: "But we weren't animals. People didn't hunt kids with tranquilizer guns."