Review: Starling by Lesley Livingston

Starling (Starling, #1)

Mason Starling is a champion fencer on the Gosforth Academy team, but she's never had to fight for her life. Not until the night a ferocious, otherworldly storm rips through Manhattan, trapping Mason and her teammates inside the school. Mason is besieged by nightmarish creatures more terrifying than the thunder and lightning as the raging tempest also brings a dangerous stranger into her life: a young man who remembers nothing but his name--the Fennrys Wolf. His arrival tears Mason's world apart, even as she feels an undeniable connection to him. Together, they seek to unravel the secrets of Fenn's identity as strange and supernatural forces gather around them. When they discover Mason's family--with its dark allegiance to ancient Norse gods--is at the heart of the mystery, Fennrys and Mason are suddenly faced with a terrifying future.
I have never read anything by Lesley Livingston before, even though I've had Wondrous Strange on my TBR shelf forever, I honestly can't say that I was blown away by this author though I will try her other books. My expectations for this book were pretty high because of the awesome synopsis an it didn't really meet it. My main problem was that not much really seemed to happen in this book. The very beginning was really strong, with action from very close to the beginning but then from there to about three quarters in this book was very slow. There was an amazing ending, and there is such a shock at the end that I will probably read on in this series but by then I was fed up.c

Alongside the slwo pace I was so annoyed by the romance. The attraction between Fennrys and Mason in obvious, but there is no romantic development and I am so sick of insta-love now that I just wanted to hurl my Kindle across the room, but I persevered and whilst the two had cute scenes at times most of it was just lust. There is also a bit of a love triangle but Callum was the most annoying and whiny character I have ever read, he is supposed to be this sweet guy but comes across as a bit of a tool, and extremely moany. I think the only character I did actually like was Heather, and I liked Roth when he turned up

Where there was action it was pretty well written, I was on my edge of my seat at a few points and if there was more of the action I would have liked this book much more, there was just too much walking around doing nothing and insta-love to keep me invested in this story, but for some reason I didn't hate this book, which I should have, so I put that down to Livingston's writing.

Overall, I had such high expectations for Starling but the book fell short due to a slow pace and boring romance and characters.

Overall Rating: C-

Book released August 28th 2012 by HarperTeen
Book bough by myself

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1 comment

  1. Instant-love, annoying (almost) love triangle and slow pace and lack of action? Oh wauw, I expected more from this book indeed. It sounded great based on the blurb, but I will set my standard a bit lower - if I'm going to read it at all. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts!

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