Book Review: Awakened by PC & Kristin Cast

Title: Awakened
Author: PC & Kristin Cast
Date of Publication: January 4th 2011
Pages: 290
Source: Bought
Series: House of Night #8
Synopsis from Goodreads.com: At the start of Awakened, the pulse-pounding eighth installment of the bestselling House of Night series, Zoey has returned, mostly whole, from the Otherworld to her rightful place as High Priestess at the House of Night. Her friends are just glad to have her back, but after losing her human consort, Heath, will Zoey—or her relationship with her super- hot Warrior, Stark—ever be the same? Stevie Rae is drawn even closer to Rephaim, the Raven Mocker with whom she shares a mysterious and powerful Imprint, but he is a dangerous secret that isolates her from her school, her red fledglings, and even her best friends. When the dark threat of Neferet—who is coming closer and closer to achieving her twisted goal of immortality—and Kalona returns, what will it take to keep the House of Night from being lost forever, and what will one desperate girl do to keep her heart from being irreparably broken?

My Thoughts:
I was quite disappointed with this book. Yes, I enjoyed it, yes, once I was a couple of chapters in, I didn't want to stop reading, but it didn't live up to my expectations.

First of all, I found it very hard to get through the beginning. We went on a 2 and a half hour car journey, and I read 20 pages. I tried to read more, but I couldn't. The beginning was just so slow...

Also, what makes it worse was the fact that it started off with Neferet narrating. She's on the Dark side, and I got bored and didn't want to read anything narrated by anyone from the Dark side. I just didn't really care. I wanted to read everything from Zoey's POV like in the first books, which I think were the best of the series. Zoey is the main character, and my favourite, and reading about Kalona and Neferet didn't interest me at all.

When I first started reading this series, I was glued to it. It was awesome, and I devoured the books, always needing to know when I could get my hands on the next one. Then, when it got to around Tempted and Burned, I felt that the series was going downhill. I think that the plot was getting a little too over-complex, and the authors couldn't keep up with a story that was running away with them. I frequently found myself confused and having to read back over what I had just read, which is something I don't normally need to do.

Too much happened in this book, and it was very short. 290 pages was not nearly enough to write what happened well in my opinion, and I think that Awakened could quite easily have been a 400 page book without it being slow. Just my thoughts though.

Despite saying all this, I did enjoy it. At times I couldn't stop reading, and I really did feel like I was there, and I felt the characters pain, sadness, happiness, and all their other feelings. And the Casts really can write. The characters are believable, and they've been through so much and changed so much, that you can't help but feel for them and care for them. I won't spoil the book for you, but it was sad, happy, and annoying, all at the same time, and there were some really well-written things in there.

The House of Night series is a good one, but it's too long. As you can probably tell, I'm a little bit undecided on whether I enjoyed this book as much as the rest or not. I think that the next book, Destined, could probably have got away with being combined with Awakened to make one 400 page book, instead of two 200 page ones. I know it's for money and publicity, but still. I would still recommend the House of Night series though, just be prepared to be reading it for a long time!

My Rating:

I give it 4 Feet!

Challenges:

2011 Paranormal YA Reading Challenge #4

2011 100+ Reading Challenge #4