Desert Rose

Troubled young girl meets troubled young guy. Typical story, before you add in the paranormal abilities, odd side characters, dramatic lies, and danger. Within the first few chapters, I figured it would be a four star book. Half way through, it went down to three, and stayed there.

My most consistent complaint and reason for removing a star, is the writing. You can most certainly tell that the author is intelligent, however when that is put into her book, at least in this case, she tended to be too wordy, and over-explain simple things. I went cross-eyed a few times while reading, getting lost in over explaining and excessive complicated medical and technical words and phrases. What it came across as, to me, was that the author was trying to show she knew a lot about things she'd researched, but went a little overboard. It didn't flow very well, for that reason, and pulled me out of the story far too often.

The biggest thing that pulled me out of the book though, was the idea that the main character didn't understand it was other people's voices she was hearing. She was supposed to be very intelligent, and had several instances where it was proven to her that she'd heard others' thoughts, yet she remained naive. She took them as "good guesses" which made her seem a bit dumb and oblivious, not intelligent. In any other instance, she was portrayed as a teen who, while medicated, thought of things on a deep level. She had the ability to figure people out quickly, understand why they did things, their motives and reasons for acting, and wasn't nearly as fog-minded and unsociable as the book tried to make her seem.

I guess that's mainly it: the book's description of her painted her in a very different light than she actually acted. The actual character would have been able to figure things out quite easily. Had her actions matched her mismatched description, she would have been dumb, she would not have thought of things like she did, and she would never have made friends with anyone. Ever. It wasn't believable, at all, and seemed as though this intelligent, gifted young girl was painted dumb so she could be rescued by the generic "troubled young man" in the cliche match-up.

While I do have my irritations with this book, it was still interesting. Once I chose to simply go with it, and not actually care if the character made sense, it was entertaining. There was a lot of emotion and drama, for those who like that sort of story, and while I'm not a big drama fan, it wasn't enough to make me cringe.

This isn't a very original story, and does have it's issues, but in my opinion, it is a solid 3 stars. For fans who like the cliche paranormal romance and characters with personal struggles, this would be an entertaining story, and I would consider recommending it.

*I was given this book, from the author, to read in exchange for an honest review.