Book: Paranormalcy

Kiersten White
Young Adult ~ Paranormal
Harper Teen / 2010
Hardback / 335 Pages
Series Paranormalcy #1

Weird as it is working for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, Evie’s always thought of herself as normal. Sure, her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she's falling for a shape-shifter, and she's the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours, but still. Normal.

Only now paranormals are dying, and Evie's dreams are filled with haunting voices and mysterious prophecies. She soon realizes that there may be a link between her abilities and the sudden rash of deaths. Not only that, but she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

So much for normal.

I picked this book up because well I was cruising blogs the other night and saw a review over at Cuddlebuggery that had me in stiches & I thought well let’s see what its all about.

What I liked the Most? The character building – Evie is a typical teenager in an unbelievable situation

What I liked the Least? The character building – adopt a mom & the faeries fell flat.

Review: I will admit – I started this book with the sole intention of going “fine just another teen fling” but really it wasn’t (for the most part) I would have liked to see the end of the book be as strong as the beginning of the book, but eh? It happens sometimes.

Okay from the start – the cover: pretty blonde girl wearing pink standing in a field with the wind blowing. I can kind of see this – Evie’s favorite color is pink (it’s mentioned several times in the book) and she feels alone (nothing around her) and cold (wind) all the time, but really probably not the best representation that you could have found.

As to Evie – she is fairly well designed. A little MarySue ish but not to extremes.

• Raised by someone other than her parents
• Fantabulous dresser & uber pretty
• She enjoys the color pink
• There are prophecies about her
• Extremely witty & snarky

But even with these MarySue points – I enjoyed her blondeness and think that her bluntness combined with naivety was endearing. And very possibly the biggest selling point – she wasn’t stupid ala Bella or Nora. I do LOVE the fact that she’s hooked on a night time soap, that’s classic – “OMG the world is ending ding it’s time for my show” – LOL.

Leading man – Lend: get it out right in the first book that he’s a one of a kind. He’s a good kid with some maturity needed but hey it is a YA series.

Full cast of paras exist in this world – hags, vamps, weres (though only wolves are mentioned), the Fey of both flavors, and zombies to name a few and I enjoyed the dichotomy of the ICPA characters & the renegades.

Recommended to: Any one who likes to read YA paranormal fiction

Best Quote: "Lish tried to swear--which is always funny, because the computer won't translate it. It went something like this: "Bleep stupid bleep bleep faeries and their bleep bleep bleep obsessions. He had better stop bleep bleep bleep the bleep bleep rules or I will bleep bleep bleep the little bleeeeeeeeeeep."