Anew by Chelsea Fine

Synopsis:
Two years ago, Scarlet awoke in the forest alone, afraid, and unable to remember anything. Lost and confused, her life was a mystery…until she met a boy with a familiar voice.

Gabriel Archer has a voice from her past, and Scarlet’s determined to remember why. She immerses herself in his life only to discover he has a brother he’s kept hidden from her: Tristan Archer.

Upon meeting Tristan, Scarlet’s world becomes even more muddled. While she’s instinctively drawn to Gabriel, she’s impossibly drawn to Tristan–and confused out of her mind. As she tries to piece together her history Scarlet realizes her past…might just be the death of her.

    

My Review:
3.5 stars — Another mixed bag read for me.  Definitely better than the previous one (obviously, since I actually finished it).  But it’s another case of me probably not continuing on in the series.  It’s funny because I kind of want to know the end result, but I don’t want to put the time in to get there…bad Lenore.  It’s just that there were a number of things that just didn’t work for me, and I found myself getting impatient while reading it.

The characters had some great moments, and I loved some more than others.  In general Scarlet was not too bad.  It was frustrating that she didn’t seem to want answers as much as me, but then I wondered if it was because I knew the brothers were hiding a lot b/c I could read their POVs.  Gabriel was OK, but I just didn’t really get much for chemistry there…probably b/c the love story is going to be with Tristan.  But again, I’m not a love triangle kind of girl, and knowing this about myself now, I might not have gotten around to reading this if it wasn’t for Utopia.  So the only good romantic stuff happened with Gabriel, but he was kind of boring and overly sweet.  Tristan threw me off at first, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to eventually like him, but oh boy did I ever.  He was my favourite.  I have my suspicions about Laura, and quite frankly I wasn’t all that impressed with Heather (the BFF).  I think she’s a love her or hate her kind of girl, and I leaned more towards hate.  She was kind of mean at times.  Maybe I just didn’t understand their friendship dynamic, you know?

The paranormal elements were intriguing.  For some reason I totally thought this was going to be a story about Elves, don’t ask me why.  I honestly don’t know what all it’s going to be about, b/c it seems there might be more than just the immortality stuff, but it wasn’t really delved into too deeply in this book.  I honestly was not a fan of the way the author kept secrets throughout the book and left the reader in the dark purposely.  I know it was probably to try to drive curiosity and tension or some literary thing, but honestly it just annoyed the crap out of me.  I just wanted to start skimming to the answers.  I found I just wasn’t caring about a lot of the little bits in between and just wanted to finally know.  And then you find out about the symbol for example (although I think there’s more to it), and it was like “oh, that was it?”  I guess I just like to be fed some answers along the way, and it felt almost contrived the way the reader was kept in the dark.  Or I don’t know, something about it just rubbed me the wrong way.  Like Tristan’s victim.  At least we learned that about half way through, but I’m not sure what the point was in hiding it for so long.  Meh, I’m just going to shut up now, but really that’s the main reason I won’t be continuing on…that and the love triangle of sorts.

Now saying all that (and holy crap, that was a lot of babble, sorry about that), I did find there were some great moments of tension and I really enjoyed whatever was happening with Tristan and Scarlet.  But it was almost too little too late if that makes sense.  If I didn’t have a bunch of books on my plate, I might have finished the series, but it’s just not enough to win me over at this point.