I received this book for free from Tor Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Nightstruck by Jenna Black
Series: Nightstruck #1
Published by Tor Teen on April 5th 2016
Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, YA
Source: Tor Books
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The start of a paranormal horror series from Glimmerglass author Jenna Black.
The night is the enemy, and the city of Philadelphia is its deadliest weapon.
Becket is an ordinary teenage girl, wrestling with the upheaval of her parents' divorce. Her biggest problems to date have been choosing which colleges to apply to, living up to her parents' ambitious expectations of her, and fighting her secret crush on her best friend's boyfriend. That all changes the night she tries to save an innocent life and everything goes horribly wrong.
Becket has been tricked into opening a door between worlds. As dark magic trickles into Philadelphia, strange creatures roam the streets and inanimate objects come to life, all of them bloodthirsty and terrifying. The city returns to normal when the sun rises each morning. The moment the sun sets, most citizens shut themselves in their houses and stay there no matter what they hear.
The magic is openly hostile to most mortals, but there are some it seems to covet, trying to lure them out into the night. While Becket struggles to protect her friends and family from predatory creatures of the night, she is constantly tempted to shrug off her responsibilities and join them.
This book was creepy and dark and very enjoyable for the most part. I did feel like there was a whole lot of waiting going on and things weren’t really moving forward, but there was always plenty going on. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense. What I mean is there is all sorts of creepy, crazy things happening even when the story didn’t seem to be moving forward that fast. I did feel like I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but since this is a start to a series I am assuming that we we get more information in the next ones. I think that it is a great start to a series and am interested to continue with it and see where things go. The author did a great job with describing things well and creating characters that were interesting to read (even if I didn’t like some of them) and I do have high hopes that this will be a good series.
Becket is the main character. At first she doesn’t seem all that interesting, and actually kind of boring. None of that is really her fault though since her dad is ridiculously strict. Of course her best friend would be her total opposite and that gets her into a lot of trouble. Mostly after things go bad, but before that too. Becket doesn’t have much of a backbone and she lets people walk all over her, but she does get more tough as the story goes on. She accidentally let some weird magic into the world so pretty much thinks that every horrible thing happening is her fault. At least once she knows that she was the cause. She’s got some major family issues and a boy issue, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders most of the time.
The other characters were varied in personality and I did enjoy getting to know all of them. Piper who is her best friend has a very loud personality. She is outgoing, popular, and does what she wants. She isn’t always a very good friend, but she does usually redeem herself, though I am not sure how genuine it all is. Then there is the boy next door, who I seriously can’t remember his name right now. He has been Becket’s crush forever, but he is Piper’s boyfriend so there’s that. He was actually really great though and I really liked him. He’s just a really nice dude and not unnaturally perfect. Then there is Bob Barker, Becket’s dog. Probably the best character in the books. I loved that dog. He is a major part of the book so he needed to be mentioned.
This book is on the extremely dark side. There is a lot of death and gore, and unlimited creepiness. The tone of it all is very dark and it’s a bit depressing to read, but oddly enjoyable. Though I feel like I don’t really have a clue what is going on still, I am interested enough to want to read the next book. I thought that things coming to like and morphing into nightmarish things was pretty cool. I mean could you imagine trash cans turning into crazy scary monster type things that literally want to eat people? Oh, and none of it can actually be captured on film, so there is no way for anyone who is not there to see any of it to know that it’s real. What I didn’t like about this book was the ridiculous cliffhanger. I mean huge abrupt ending. I mean, I get it. You need to keep people interested, but that ending was just like, WTF?! Overall I did enjoy the book and after that crap ending I do want to know what happens next. If you can’t stand cliffhangers then I would definitely not read this book until the next one is out, but if they don’t bother you too much then go for it. Be warned though it isn’t happy or fluffy at all. It is really dark and doesn’t have much of a silver lining.
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