The summary is misleading. It led me to believe that this story would be an exciting read, but rest assured it is far from that.
Though I don't mind reading the character's day-by-day life, I would appreciate that if I had to it would at least be somewhat interesting. No, instead I sat through 85% of the book reading about Zoe's daily life struggles, which were deep and realistic, but hardly page-turn worthy. I learned about her autistic sister Abria and her addicted brother, Luke. Which at first fleshed out the character development but just when I thought I was comfortable with each of the characters and it was time to move on to something exciting (or at least paranormal?), the story never did. It stayed there, day-by-day in a horrible cycle of dull, painful routine. I read about Zoe going to Starbucks in every other chapter, and it wouldn't have bothered me so much if the scene had more to do with thickening the plot versus a meaningless outing and some stiff dialogue.
At 85% we're finally introduced to something remotely evil, something that actually might threaten the daily ritual of our character's normal lives. Two pages later, nothing really happens and we never see the evil things again.
Don't purchase the book for any romantic value either, because their virtually isn't much in it. Sure you get the feeling of having a big crush on the guardian angel, but it doesn't go beyond lingering glances and the random thought. The paranormal/supernatural quality isn't much better, aside from a guardian angel guy that shows up randomly and leaves randomly; it doesn't have much more of a supernatural feel.
The relationship between our lead characters feels rushed (despite the slow progression of the plot) and hollow, even at the very end. I sat there shaking my head thinking, "How can they love each other so much, when nothing has really happened?" Sure love at first sight exists, but I'm a little tired of reading about YA-Paranormal-Romances without any true romance development. I'm sick of our lead girl falling head over heels for the lead guy, and vice versa without any PURPOSE.
I suppose the final, deciding factor was the countless errors. Not so many misspelled words, but I found tons of other errors. Some words weren't spaced, so you ended up with a mutated hybrid of "Sheruns" or "notreally" that couldn't possibly have slipped by so unnoticed. Even a generic spell check should pick that up! What's worse was the layout of the story itself. In the middle of dialogue the sentence would be chopped in half and resumed in the following paragraph. It was distracting and unprofessional. I think not spacing out the words or lines correctly was what destroyed the ending.
It should have left you feeling warm and fuzzy inside, but because of poor editing the ending was jumbled and confusing. I reread it twice before I figured out who was saying what at the very end, and by that point I couldn't have cared less.
The only reason this is a 2 star review and not a 1 star is because when the errors weren't present, when something somewhat interesting DID happen it was pretty good.
Final Note:
This book felt more like a "prequel" than book one of a series. It barely touched on important plot points, and left me with so little to show in my hands that I don't feel the need to purchase the second title. Don't use the entirety of a book to slowly poke at the plot of the series, you keep that subtlety in prologues or prequels, but NEVER in the first book of what should have been a promising series.
