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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Story In There Somewhere, October 19, 2009
This review is from: Intertwined (Harlequin Teen) (Hardcover)
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Gena Showalter's Intertwined has a fascinating premise: Aden, the main character, has four other souls living within his head whom he constantly hears. Each soul has a special "gift", such as time traveling or raising the dead, but it's Aden's habit of conversing aloud with the souls that has landed him in mental facilities and foster homes since the age of three. Needless to say, it's been almost impossible for Aden to make friends, and the fact that he knows exactly how he will die (thanks to one of the souls) doesn't help his situation. Until he moves to the D and M Ranch for troubled boys and receives a vision of a beautiful girl who will become his love interest; suddenly Aden is eager to find out if the girl he sees briefly is the mystery girl and he gets himself enrolled in the local school in order to find out. Only Mary Ann is not the girl, though she does become a friend. Instead, the beautiful vampire Victoria reveals herself to Aden, accusing him of "calling" her into his life. Thus begins a relationship that finds Aden battling the undead, the school bully, a bunkmate, a werewolf, and assorted other paranormal creatures as he searches for a way to set the souls trapped within free and possibly even get the girl in the process.
Whew. That's a lot of description to pack into a little paragraph. Trouble is, that's only the tip of the iceberg with Intertwined. It seems that each new chapter brings further complications and characters to muddy the waters and make Aden's life more difficult. And that is the biggest problem with this book: it's so convoluted with plots, sub-plots, and coincidences that I'm still not sure what was the main focus. Though I rather enjoyed the characters of Mary Ann, Riley, and Aden, the rest of the cast seemed placed solely for convenience's sake, including love interest Victoria: how wonderful (cough!) was it that she has a gift of making people do and think whatever she wants (but doesn't really practice it on Aden) so that everyone can get out of tight scrapes easily? The conversations were often stilted, moving from today's slang ("Hawt!") to old-fashioned Romanian style vampire-speak within a page or less. And the whole drama with Mary Ann's bff Penny? Unnecessary and just plain distracting. I just kept feeling as though the storyline, while unique, could have been so much more if half of the ideas had been left out and more focus given to the characters' feelings. And at times, if I'm being honest, I felt that the writing style itself bordered on inexperience (though I know that's not the case of the author). All of this mixed together just makes the whole idea...well, silly and not very well planned out.
I still am giving this novel three stars, rounded up from 2.5 because there was a section where Aden and Mary Ann were developing a good relationship that I felt the pages flying by. And overall, it is a fast read with so much potential. There was some humor and some angst that captured me, but this novel needed an editor with a much heavier hand than the one it got. Obviously the ending is a set up for a sequel but I am sure I'll give it a pass. That ending fight scene alone was so poorly written that I'd feel like having my own eyes poked out to spend more of my life wading through too many coincidences and not enough substance.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Intertwined and story with well.... everything and then some., September 20, 2009
This review is from: Intertwined (Harlequin Teen) (Hardcover)
Somewhat confusing, with the many different story arc's but still a good read once you wade through the layers of the main and subplots of the book. Sadly, all the layers seem to only take away the ease of reading and relating to the main characters - let alone the four souls trapped in Adens head. It just makes it all little hard to follow with so much going on and so many mythical creatures popping up in what felt like every turn of the page.
The biggest let down for me by far, was that the story was sold to me on the fact that the it was about a person with 4 souls trapped inside of him and that each one had a different ability. Seeing the future, Possessing another, Waking the Dead and Time Travel - which was amazing to read when it finally happened throughout the book. I just wished there were more interaction with the trapped souls. In my eyes with the
whole mix of the many different things going on in this world that Gena Showalter has written, the main plot as I saw it (the four souls) had somewhat fallen to the wayside. In the end things were tied up with the souls a little bit to quickly for what I was expecting and left me with questions that I will only hope to see the answers for in the books to follow.
As a whole it was far from bad, just a little jumbled and confusing. Those few flaws wouldn't and won't prevent me from purchasing the next in the series as I look forward to learning more in the future and to find out just where the author will take us and her characters next.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
enjoyed it, November 23, 2009
This review is from: Intertwined (Harlequin Teen) (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I've read almost all of Showalter's books and I don't remember there ever being a teen book mixed in there, so I was pleasantly suprised by this one. I must admit I was engrossed from the beginning. I even completed the somewhat hefty book in two days. Aden is an unusual boy. Upon birth he sucked into his body four other spirits. All four spirits are all in their own right supernatural. One can flash back into time, one can raise the dead, one can see the future, and one is a sex-starved, harmonal...uh-hum....I mean can flash into another body and control it. Aden is able to use all these gifts since he is in possession of the spirits.
On the downside, Aiden's birth parents gave him up when he was three and he has been in one foster home after another with the exception of all the institutions he had also spent time in. From an early age (despite said early age) he was classified as scizophrenic (spelling?). At age 16 he now resides in a group home for troubled boys. On the upside his future telling spirit is not fortelling him meeting a girl, a girl he will fall in love with. Now if only he wasn't also fortelling his soon death.
I thought it was great. My only complaint for the novel was that there was too much information packed into the story. Way too many sequences and plots going all at once. I must admit that Showalter did work it out so that it wasn't confusing...just too busy.
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