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My Review:Title: Nocturnal
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron
Series: The Noctalis Chronicles #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: February 10, 2012
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 304
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Paranormal Romance
Potential Triggers: View Spoiler »
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Quarantine Edition
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:Seventeen-year-old Ava-Claire Sullivan's mother is dying. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that her greatest solace comes from someone who's already dead.
Peter Hart saves her one night in a graveyard from an attacker just as strange as he is, and now Ava can't stop thinking about him. She wants to see him again – even after he warns her he's dangerous, and she begins to realize what he is. Her best friends don't know anything about death, but Peter does, intimately. He's waiting for her the next night she comes to the cemetery, and the next...
But their growing bond comes up against a promise Peter made a long time ago, a promise that could destroy them both. Now Ava has to decide just what she's willing to give up to hold onto the one thing that could last forever.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
4.5 stars — I must say that this book broke the mold for me for paranormal romance. For one, the romance was really slow and in some ways more realistic b/c it started out with an innate curiosity about the other…something that tugged them together, for reasons they could not explain, and made them both behave out of their norms. And it wasn’t all about the romance…in fact it was kind of a small part. And the paranormal aspect was intriguing b/c it had pieces of a lot of myths, and yet was not completely explained b/c it couldn’t be completely explained…but we were given enough to want to read more and find out more.
Peter was a fascinating hero….in that in some ways he wasn’t a hero at all. There were many dark elements about him and that is just who he had become. Ms. Cameron didn’t try to sugarcoat him….he wasn’t some good misunderstood evil thing….he was who he was, and he wasn’t good so much as tugged into a different set of feelings. I really appreciated that….it gets kind of tiring to read the same sorts of “evil but good” characters. And she wrote him so well, he was so…long forgotten of humanity.
The real gem of this story is Ava. I didn’t always understand her, and I didn’t always get her choices and reactions and her relationship with her father (probably why I rounded down instead of up), but she was an intriguing character. She was skeptical and scared when she needed to be, but with a complimentary insatiable curiosity. And the crux of this story for me was that it was a contemporary story about a girl dealing with grief and the inevitability of a death, with a strange paranormal twist on the side. There was a lot about how she was going through losing her mother, and I could relate having lost my father to the big C as a teenager. It’s so hard to try to be “strong” for them, but you’re also sitting there dealing with something horrific and sometimes you don’t want to be strong. Anyways, this is what got to me and had me wanting to round up to 5 instead. I LOVED how Ms. Cameron dealt with such a difficult subject.
I guess in the end the round down won b/c there were bits of the story that I didn’t understand, and I kept thinking I missed something. It was like they would say she told him about her Mom, but I didn’t remember it happening, and it left me confused and jarred out of the story occasionally. Regardless, I can’t wait to see where this goes.
ON REREAD:
3.5 stars — Not as good on reread, but not as awful as the last reread I tried. There are parts of me that still agrees with a lot of what I said in my original review. I appreciated Ava’s experience dealing with her Mom, and I enjoyed the slower romance.
I think one of the things that stood out to me the most is that this is what Twilight might have been if you didn’t sugarcoat the weird obsession, potential for violence, etc. Peter is not good. But he starts to see something that he has forgotten and wants back, and Ava intrigues him. I appreciate that. I mean, it’s weird when the hero is violent to the heroine in an attempt to warn her away, but it was also more realistic I guess. Similarly, I don’t feel like we give Ava a pass for being reckless and stupid. She truly is reckless and stupid. But instead of trying to make that out to be a good thing, it just is what it is, and it is how she and Peter develop a relationship.
Things that didn’t work for me this time around:
- It was almost too slow in the buildup. The lack of answers about Noctalis, the mysterious promise, it was just…frustrating.
- That last paragraph in my original review? Oh yeah, noticed the consistency issues a LOT. There were little mistakes (like they’re getting in the car, and then they’re walking to the car); there were bigger mistakes (like what is noted above with things being mentioned as though they happened, but they didn’t).
- Ava and Tex are kinda mean girls. This is another case of me becoming more enlightened, and I just don’t want to see the heroines I’m supposed to be connecting with being bullies and jerks. Like, at one point Tex is feeling down and so Ava pulls out their yearbook so they can point out the people getting fat and laugh and feel better about themselves. Nope. There was also a moment where Ava honest to god thinks something along the lines of “what does Tex expect when she dresses like that” when they’re at a party, referencing guy attention/harrassment. Again, nope.
- I kinda hated that Jamie is going through something big, but Ava’s too busy dealing with her own shit to notice…and that she still won’t tell him about her Mom, because you know, maybe that would help.
Sooooo…I’m going to keep rereading, b/c I wanted to finish the series. We’ll see how I feel after book 2. This wasn’t enough to turn me off, it just wasn’t as enjoyable as I remember…or I’ve changed too much or something.
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