BOOK REVIEW: DNF Pile #7

Oh man, crushing disappointment showed up again and planted its fat ass right on top of my very high hopes. I'm sad...really, really sad.

First of all, I have to say that I liked the author's writing style, which was beautifully descriptive & vivid without being too wordy or weighed down by unnecessary details. Unfortunately, characters (especially the main protagonist) make or break a book for me, and Darian turned me off faster than a drunken guido from the Jersey Shore.

Listen, I like flawed, damaged characters and I don't even mind if they are in need of a slight attitude adjustment. However, they also have to possess some positive, endearing qualities that shine through to the surface. I couldn't find any in Darian. In my honest opinion, she was wholly unlikeable. Actually, to be frank, she was an uber-bitch, who was careless, self-absorbed, shallow, and infuriatingly cocky. Perhaps later in the book she redeems herself and develops into a much nicer, more mature individual, but she annoyed me so much in those initial 100 pages that I just didn't feel the patience or motivation to stick around to find out.

Another thing that totally irked me was the romance between her and Tyler. As a couple of reviewers have already pointed out, Tyler chases around after Darian like a lovesick puppy (regardless of how many times she kicks him to the curb). Worse yet, he's one of those enthusiastically horny puppies that repeatedly tries to hump your leg (among other parts of the anatomy). Seriously, he pretty much sexually harasses & molests Darian whenever he's in her presence. Not cool. Not cool at all. I mean, I understand that Darian sends him a lot of mixed signals and she continuously does this frustrating push-pull dance with him, but when someone tells you to stop and back off, you reel in your raging hormones and you do as they say without them having to physically shove you away again & again. Tyler obviously didn't get that memo.

Given the concept that Mythos Academy is a training place for young descendants of mythical warriors, I was hoping that Touch of Frost would reinvent & rejuvenate the very tired boarding/private school cliche. Sadly, it didn't. As in many other YA books of its kind, the students at Mythos Academy are all ridiculously good-looking, popular, powerful, rich, and stuck up. All except for the heroine, of course. Unsurprisingly, she's the supposedly plain-looking (but not so plain-looking), rebel outsider that both sticks out like a sore thumb and gets completely ignored by everyone around her...until (of course) it turns out that she is in fact really, really special. Yawn.

Speaking of the heroine, I was unable to connect with Gwen on any level. She seemed to have a rather negative, judgmental attitude towards everything & everyone. She also seemed way too preoccupied with what the students around her were wearing. Plus, I found it silly how she treated her lessons on gods & goddesses as complete mumbo jumbo despite the fact that she was surrounded by people with magical powers and other superhuman abilities.

And then there was her love interest, Logan. Apparently he's considered oh so sexy because he "scares everyone" and "likes to hurt people" on top of sleeping around with anything female (and signing girls' mattresses). What a dreamboat. Yep, his introduction into the story was pretty much the final nail in the coffin after which I decided the book was most definitely not for me.

This book was just an all-around snoozefest. Nothing really happened. There was a whole lot of talking & arguing (meant to be some form of flirting I suppose) but very little doing of anything of real significance. The interactions between the two main protagonists were immature, melodramatic, and outright silly. Moreover, the hero came off skeevy & neurotic, and the heroine was painfully bland. On top of that, the villain was cartoonishly evil and one-dimensional. I gave up after a handful of chapters.