Series: Salt


Friday, December 20, 2013

Review: Salt by Danielle Ellison

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I received this book for free from Entangled Teen in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review: Salt by Danielle EllisonSalt by Danielle Ellison
Series: Salt #1
Published by Entangled Teen on January 7th 2014
Genres: Paranormal, YA
Source: Entangled Teen
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two-stars

Penelope is a witch, part of a secret society protecting humans from demon attacks. But when she was a child, a demon killed her parents—and stole her magic. Since then, she’s been pretending to be something she’s not, using her sister’s magic to hide her own loss, to prevent being sent away.

When she’s finally given the chance to join the elite demon-hunting force, Penelope thinks that will finally change. With her sister’s help, she can squeeze through the tests and get access to the information she needs to find "her" demon. To take back what was stolen.

Then she meets Carter. He’s cute, smart, and she can borrow his magic, too. He knows her secret—but he also has one of his own.

Suddenly, Penelope’s impossible quest becomes far more complicated. Because Carter’s not telling her everything, and it’s starting to seem like the demons have their own agenda…and they’re far too interested in her.

I love witch stories. But this was not one of them. Penelope is a witch without powers – they were stolen from her and now she’s dead set on hunting the demon who stole them. This sounds like it could be a fun, action packed novel, except all we have here is a girl who whines a lot and spends most of the book being boring and talking herself out of kissing a guy who apparently annoys her.

That is the gist of it. Exams, simulations, graduation, research, more research, coffee dates, research; some very thrilling stuff in here… There weren’t even interesting characters to make up for it. The side characters all blended together, honestly. I can’t say I even care to discuss any of them in this series. I mean, one is called Poncho, and hangs out in a library with cats. What do you want me to say? O_O As for Penelope, she’s simply annoying with her tiresome inner monologue. It consists of not much else than her wanting to be “normal” and feigning irritation over her stalker but is actually secretly falling in love with him *Le sigh*. Plus, the girl has the lamest of lame jokes:

“So you have a theory? I hope it’s not string theory; I hear people are working on that already.”

*no one laughs*

Penelope aside, the lore introduced in this book reminded me of Mortal Instruments, with a mix of Harry Potter. Her parents died, attacked by a mysterious demon rumored to be Lucifer’s very own (the epitome of demons), who left her forever changed – “unique” in her kind. The witches have their own government and buildings glamoured amongst others. Their 6 floor hub building is, in reality, 16 floors with glamoured entrances. Inside are elevators that go up and down as well as sideways, and libraries that are so large, researchers disappear in it. As for the demons, they are found all over the city, can possess humans, and the witches’ jobs are to keep humans safe from the demons on earth. Maybe I’ve read a lot of books, but nothing about this came off very original to me.

They also treat humans as if they’re another being altogether:

“We walk together in silence. Past the Nons barbecuing on their lawns, trimming the grass, playing with water sprinklers in their front yards.”
–As if witches don’t do mundane things like that. *hairflip*

“Then you had no right to track it down in a highly infested Non location”
–And if you’re not a witch, you’re an infestation!

On a side note: non magical people are called Nons, and their hub building is called Nucleus House. In my head, though, for some reason I kept reading it as nuns and Nuclear House, so the book was likely very different in my imagination than it was meant to be. 😀

I wanted to DNF this one more than once, but I kept going in the hopes that something would happen. It wasn’t the worst book ever, but I was very, very bored for most of it. By the end, the book could have exploded and I would not have raised my interest. The characters fell flat, the plot felt overused, and the romance left much to be desired.

*Quotes in this review were taken from the uncorrected proof*

two-stars

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