Wednesday, September 25, 2019

REVIEW: Paper Dolls by Anya Allyn

33921036. sy475 In Book One, Cassie, Ethan, and Lacey sought their missing friend, Aisha, in the deep of the forest. After being captured by the deadly trap of the dollhouse, Cassie bravely fought her way to the surface. 
But she's beginning to question if any of them were truly rescued. Because once you've ventured into the underground dollhouse, the spirits there will never release you. 
                                                      ~
Back in 1920, a clairvoyant tells 14-year-old circus performer, Sparrow, that she is soon to die an unnatural death. With her grandfather spending the last of his circus fortunes on dark magic and with Mr. Baldcott chasing her for marriage, Sparrow doesn't know who to turn to.
Then a circus train derailment in Copper Canyon that kills most of the people on board changes everything. Someone has blown up the tracks, someone who wanted desperately to get hold of the Book of the Mirrored Tree that Sparrow's grandfather was transporting - a book of the most dangerous knowledge humankind has ever known.
                                                     ~                    
In present day, Cassie travels to Copper Canyon to try to find the Book of the Mirrored Tree. Too late she discovers a chilling, devastating betrayal.


NOTE: This is the second book in a series and there will be spoilers for book one. Read the review for book one here.


MY THOUGHTS
It has been five years since I read book one, so when I tried to read Paper Dolls, I was a bit confused. I decided to reread book one, but I was still confused because I guess Anya Allyn updated Dollhouse and the copy I had was not the updated version. Sigh. I guess that's on me, I can't really fault Anya Allyn for confusing me in the book, I understand wanting to update books, but it was frustrating. I oftentimes felt like I jumped into a parallel universe of Dollhouse, where some things were slightly different but different enough that I questioned my own memory. I got used to it, but it made for an uncomfortable reading experience at times.

I really wondered what would happen in this book. The original version of Dollhouse that I read ended on a cliffhanger, although from what I understand, the updated version has less of a cliffhanger. Cassie is no longer trapped in the underground dollhouse, but her and Aisha face the media frenzy of being the dollhouse girls, when they just want to get back to their normal lives. Ethan is also out, but the media blames him and his grandfather for the kidnappings. Cassie is trying to deal with the betrayal, so she and Aisha's family decides to go on vacation and they meet a couple of cute guys. But these guys aren't quite who they thought they were either and Cassie can't escape the dollhouse.

Since this book begins with them escaping the dollhouse, I worried whether enough would happen in this book. The answer: not much happens, at least to Cassie. Cassie's story is plenty much everything I said above, just really elongated a bit mundane, and an added adventure plot that sounds more exciting than it actually was. She has a new love interest, but that was meh. I didn't really see any chemistry, but it was the same with Ethan in the last book. Cassie's story gets interesting near the very end, but not until then.

We do get Jessamine's story in this book, from Jessamine's POV. This was the best part of this book. When her perspective first started, I wasn't sure about reading a new perspective, and a historical one at that, but I loved seeing her backstory. Her story one of the least confusing parts of this book and one of the more hauntings parts of the book. This book wasn't much of a horror book, definitely less so than the first book, but Jessamine's story showed us tragic horror elements.


IN CONCLUSION
Overall, I did like this book. Cassie's story in this book was very slow and I wasn't as interested in what she was doing, but Jessamine's story made up for it. I was super confused at times in this book thanks to the update but I pushed through. The ending is intriguing and I can tell that book three is going in a new direction. I'm planning on continuing the series, but...I get the feeling that the books got updated again. So, I'm likely going to be confused YET AGAIN! Ugh.



I hereby give this book
3 Stars
Meaning: I liked it.

No comments :

Post a Comment