Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.
But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.
Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.
But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.
I generally seem to have trouble enjoying Meg Cabot's books. The only books I liked from her (from those that I've read) were the Mediator series, and even then I really didn't LOVE it. Most of her books I just found okay, or annoying, but I don't really hate them.
Now, this is the point where I wish I could say that I found one that I liked, but no, I was not a fan of this book. Like her other books, I didn't hate this one, but I also can't find much that I liked about it.
A few years ago, Pierce died, but then she came back. But now she is forever haunted by what she saw when she died, an afterlife and a man. This same man came to her when she was a child, at the cemetery of Isla Huesos. And since her death, he keeps coming back, protecting her from others. Except this makes people suspicious of her. When Pierce's family moves back to Isla Huesos, Pierce knows that she will have to confront this strangeness head-on.
It was difficult to write a synopsis for this book because the plot is so convoluted. First off, this book isn't always told linearly. Throughout the book, Pierce lets us in on strange details from her life. It takes a while to understand what happened when she died. It takes a while to understand what happened to her when she was a child. It takes even longer for her to even tell us what John did after Pierce was resurrected. This made things a little confusing. Not only because Pierce was vague about everything, but because the book didn't always flag what was present-day and what was a flashback. Now, I listened to this on audio, so maybe the flashbacks were italicized in print, but from reading other reviews I can see that this was a common problem.
The second issue with the plot is that there wasn't really one. There are multiple subplots, but all of them either go nowhere or they were resolved abruptly. One example of a plot that went nowhere was how Pierce starts at a new school and the popular kids decide to build a coffin on Pierce's property. There was a big deal throughout the book about Coffin Night, which is an island tradition, but it never went anywhere. There's a point where Pierce thinks the tradition has something to deal with John, but that is barely confirmed? Most of the book focused on Pierce's flashbacks and learning about John. Otherwise, we don't really get a plot until the very end which, again, was very abrupt.
The only positive I can think of for this book is that it included some interesting mythical elements that I rarely see in books. For instance, the necklace. But, they still were mostly hinted at and felt overshadowed by the other, not-so-great, parts of the book. There, that was my one positive. I also found the afterlife intriguing. I was originally curious that Pierce had died and come back. These instances were not touched on like I hoped they would.
As for characters, all of them felt really flat. Besides Pierce and John, everyone was simply there to move certain plot points forward. For instance, the cemetery sexton is there to fill Pierce in on who John is and everything afterlife and everything Greek. Pierce herself was just a blah MC. She wasn't terrible, but she was annoying and made poor decisions. I also felt like, for an MC, she never really did anything. She just bikes to the cemetery a lot. Really, it felt like everything was just happening to her and I couldn't see why she was so important.
As for romance, oh boy was it bad. Our love interest in this book is John and he is a creepy, possessive, brooding, dark boy who creeps around cemeteries. To give you some context, Pierce and John first meet when Pierce is seven (John resembles a teenager then because he is semi-immortal. This tells you that John is a lot older than Pierce). When Pierce dies, she sees him in the afterlife and tries to talk to him. She tells him that she wants to leave, so John transports her to his bedroom and then expects her to stay with him forever. Pierce understandably freaks out and then she comes back to life. This is the short version, but what you can understand from this is that John is predatory. He gave her a necklace that Pierce wears (even though she had this negative experience) and it tells John when she is in trouble. So, sometimes he pops up again and attacks things. So, he's also violent.
I never understood the "relationship" between Pierce and John. As I mentioned, Pierce had no personality, so I couldn't see why John latched onto Pierce. But I also couldn't understand Pierce's interactions with John. To be honest, it read a lot like a toxic abusive relationship, before the relationship even started. Pierce had the sane reaction of running away from John after he takes her to his bedroom, but she still wears the necklace and, after moving to the island, she keeps wanting to talk to John. Her inner dialogue talks about how much she hates him, but she is still drawn to him. What really infuriated me was that she was gaslighted for disliking John. There's a point where she has a conversation with the cemetery sexton (and this is where we basically learn everything about John). When Pierce tells him what John has been doing to her, the sexton tells her to not be so tough on John and be "a little sweeter to that boy". I see this relationship as a trek to an abusive relationship, but this old man tells this girl that she needs to be nicer to her abuser. What infuriates me more is that this is something that is also commonly seen when women speak out about abusive relationships, except this book isn't supposed to be about toxic relationships. We are supposed to believe the sexton and want Pierce and John to get together.
IN CONCLUSION
Okay, so I did not enjoy reading this book. You might wonder after reading all of these negative comments why I still gave this book 2 stars rather than 1. Well, I didn't outright hate this book. Even though I didn't like very much in this book, I didn't hate everything in this book. I sure hated the romance, but everything else was just flat. I also didn't feel like I was forcing myself to read this book through its entirety, which is what I usually feel during 1-star books. I also have yet to rate a book 1 star this year and I do not want to start now.
I hereby give this book
2 Stars
Meaning: It was okay
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