Sixteen-year-old Kylie has lots of problems. Her parents are getting divorced and her formerly affectionate dad has moved out and is ignoring her. Her mother is cold and uninvolved, too, and Kylie is in therapy. She wakes up screaming from "night terrors," and she's scared that she might be insane because she keeps seeing a soldier who stalks her everywhere that no one else can see. Just when she needs his support most, Trey, the handsome boy she dated for over a year, dumps her because she won't have sex with him and starts dating a girl who will. As if all that weren't bad enough, Kylie's best friend drags her to a wild party at which she sees her ex nuzzling his new girl, and Kylie is rounded up with most of the guests when the police raid the party. Even though Kylie didn't drink or do drugs herself, her mother takes the advice of Kylie's therapist and ships her to a camp for troubled teens.
Being shipped away is the mustard on the stink sandwich that is Kylie's life. Especially when she finds out that this isn't a camp of juvenile delinquents but something Kylie thinks is far worse--a place for teens with paranormal powers to find themselves. Kylie would rather have a brain tumor than paranormal powers, but she can't talk to her mom about her situation for fear her mom will ship her to a mental institution instead. So she hangs around and follows the program, which is figuring out who and what she is, and participating in exercises aimed at the different species of magical creatures getting along, instead of going to war with each other. These species are all the typical ones found in most YA urban fantasies these days: fairies/fae, witches, vampires, werewolves, all-purpose shapeshifters, and ghost whisperers, which is what everyone thinks Kylie is. There is mention of the magical creatures being descended from some unspecified "gods."
The only silver lining for Kylie is that she is able to make friends with her two roommates, a witch named Miranda and a vampire named Della, and two super-hot guys are attracted to her, a werewolf named Lucas and a fae who can talk to animals named Derek. Not to mention that Trey is attending a camp only a few miles from where Kylie is and is determined to rekindle his relationship with her.
I admit I wasn't extremely psyched up about this story when the blurb on the back of the book warned me there was going to be a love triangle which, frankly, I'm really getting tired of reading in YA paranormal novels. The main issue I have with triangles is that I personally like to know who to root for when a heroine is interested in more than one guy, or vice versa. A friend of mine who really likes the whole triangle thing told me that she doesn't like it when the third prong of the triangle is obviously not a viable option since the other guy leaves him in the dust (for example Jace vs Simon in the first three books of the
Mortal Instruments series). She likes it when there is a little real competition.
I guess you could say there is some real competition in this book, but only in the sense that the three males are all almost equally one-dimensional as characters, because almost the only thoughts Kylie has about any of them is to admire their handsome faces and lust after their muscles. To the degree that Derek and Lucas have magical powers, Kylie is more scared or disgusted by that than impressed. So for most of the book, that isn't even a real advantage to the two supernaturals.
The other thing the two "supes" have going for them, though, that I think the reader is supposed to put strongly in their favor, is that Lucas and Derek, unlike Trey, are "gentlemen" in that they are very attracted to the beautiful heroine, but they don't push her to have sex. Personally, I don't see how their restraint is particularly impressive. Any male who hasn't even had a single date with a 16-year-old virgin, only a one-hour walk in the woods as a camp assignment, who suddenly tries to jump her bones is, plain and simple, a would-be rapist in my book. Failing to try and force sex from the heroine, either by mind control (which one of the two supes is capable of) or force (which both are physically capable of, even if they were only human), simply puts them in the category of a non-predator. Whether either has any virtue, remains to be proven.
Though one of the three contenders actually has a chance in the climax to prove he has some virtue, the only other viable romantic contender can't prove himself virtuous because he isn't around due to complications of the plot. So the story is wide open for at least a triangle to continue on. I don't think it is much of a spoiler to say that quadrangle end of the equation, Trey, never had much chance from the start. It is pretty clear from the moment Kylie goes to paranormal camp, she isn't going to choose Trey. He is merely human, and he has already made himself non-redeemable in the audience's eyes by dumping her to have user-sex with another girl--not to mention that his "seduction" technique involves pouting when Kylie refuses to progress from making out to having intercourse with him. (By the way, fair warning, this makeout session takes place on stage and does little to improve Kylie's standing as a sympathetic heroine.)
As for the action-adventure part of the plot--which is something an author really needs to deliver if she is going to have a bunch of magical super heroes running around in an urban-fantasy story--it is incredibly tame. Kylie isn't in any real danger, other than a minor run-in with a snake, until the book is almost over. The vast majority of the book is spent with her thinking passively that she doesn't know if she has any paranormal power, and what will happen to her if she has power, and well, maybe she might possibly want it, but maybe not; and also, "dad-blast it" but those hot boys look kissable, and who do I want to be with, or do I want to be with no guy at all because my life is so complicated? And so on, and on, and on. Nothing but page after page of endless dithering. (What is it with passive heroines lately? I just read
Abandon by Meg Cabot, and that story has the same problem, a want-nothing, do-nothing heroine who just whines in her head all the time.)
As for her friendships with Della and Miranda, those might have been interesting if done well, but unfortunately, they weren't either. Most of the time all they did was listen to Kylie vent out loud about her dithering that we've already heard in her head about boys and her presumed paranormal powers. It would have been more interesting if the dithering had been confined to conversations which contributed somehow to an action plot instead of being merely a pretty boring rehash.
The actual writing itself, though, is okay in the sense that the author is decent at putting words on the page in a way that flows, and there weren't any editing problems I saw.
