Review: Intertwined by Gena Showalter
by Gena Showalter
Aden Stone would just like to have some peace and quiet, a day where he could be alone with his thoughts. It’s not something that can ever happen, since he’s sharing his body with four other human souls. Each soul has its own personality and its own supernatural power, giving Aden the ability to raise the dead, time travel, take possession of other peoples’ bodies, and predict the future. He’s practically a superhero…except that everybody thinks he’s crazy because he hears voices, so he’s spent most of his life in and out of foster care, halfway houses and detention centers. One of his classmates, Mary Ann, can silence the other souls with her mere presence, but neither of them knows how or why. She, too, hears a voice in her head - that of a mysterious black wolf that follows her to and from school. The wolf protects a vampire princess, a beautiful girl that Aden has seen in his visions of the future. She may be able to help free the other souls in his body…or she may bring about Aden’s destruction.
This book has a lot of problems, like mediocre writing and an extremely action-based plot with virtually no character development. But the biggest problem by far is that there is just waaaaay too much going on. It’s like the author couldn’t decide which trendy supernatural creature she wanted to write about, so she put ALL of them in her story. So we have zombies, vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, fairies, witches, and goblins, as well as the superpowered displaced souls trapped in Aden’s body.
A lot of these creatures are dropped into the story but never really developed. For example, whenever Aden enters or walks by a cemetery, the dead will rise from their graves. The book opens with a zombie-slaying scene. But after the first scene, we don’t see the zombies again until the end of the book. Likewise, witches are mentioned a few times by characters, but we don’t actually see any until the final chapters of Intertwined. Even then, they don’t do much except set a date with Aden to rendezvous in the sequel. Fairies, likewise, make a token appearance but don’t really do anything other than exist.
Why didn’t the author just pick one or two supernatural creatures and actually develop their history and back story instead of throwing everything she could think of into the book? It’s a total clusterf*ck.
It’s actually really disappointing, because the idea of a boy with multiple souls living in his body would have been plenty interesting on its own, but Aden’s completely overwhelmed by all the other paranormal tropes crawling out of the woodwork.
To top it off, Intertwined builds up to spectacular showdown between Aden and his vampire rival, and the fight lasts for only a few disappointingly bland pages, to end with a killer cliffhanger.
Just an awful book from beginning to end.
1 out of 5 stars
To read more about Intertwined, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.
Aden Stone would just like to have some peace and quiet, a day where he could be alone with his thoughts. It’s not something that can ever happen, since he’s sharing his body with four other human souls. Each soul has its own personality and its own supernatural power, giving Aden the ability to raise the dead, time travel, take possession of other peoples’ bodies, and predict the future. He’s practically a superhero…except that everybody thinks he’s crazy because he hears voices, so he’s spent most of his life in and out of foster care, halfway houses and detention centers. One of his classmates, Mary Ann, can silence the other souls with her mere presence, but neither of them knows how or why. She, too, hears a voice in her head - that of a mysterious black wolf that follows her to and from school. The wolf protects a vampire princess, a beautiful girl that Aden has seen in his visions of the future. She may be able to help free the other souls in his body…or she may bring about Aden’s destruction.
This book has a lot of problems, like mediocre writing and an extremely action-based plot with virtually no character development. But the biggest problem by far is that there is just waaaaay too much going on. It’s like the author couldn’t decide which trendy supernatural creature she wanted to write about, so she put ALL of them in her story. So we have zombies, vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, fairies, witches, and goblins, as well as the superpowered displaced souls trapped in Aden’s body.
A lot of these creatures are dropped into the story but never really developed. For example, whenever Aden enters or walks by a cemetery, the dead will rise from their graves. The book opens with a zombie-slaying scene. But after the first scene, we don’t see the zombies again until the end of the book. Likewise, witches are mentioned a few times by characters, but we don’t actually see any until the final chapters of Intertwined. Even then, they don’t do much except set a date with Aden to rendezvous in the sequel. Fairies, likewise, make a token appearance but don’t really do anything other than exist.
Why didn’t the author just pick one or two supernatural creatures and actually develop their history and back story instead of throwing everything she could think of into the book? It’s a total clusterf*ck.
It’s actually really disappointing, because the idea of a boy with multiple souls living in his body would have been plenty interesting on its own, but Aden’s completely overwhelmed by all the other paranormal tropes crawling out of the woodwork.
To top it off, Intertwined builds up to spectacular showdown between Aden and his vampire rival, and the fight lasts for only a few disappointingly bland pages, to end with a killer cliffhanger.
Just an awful book from beginning to end.
1 out of 5 stars
To read more about Intertwined, buy it or add it to your wishlist click here.