"Dark Companion" Review

Date to be published: July 3, 2012

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Number of Pages: 368

Publisher: Tor/Macmillan

First Thoughts:

This book was a little hard for me to get into at first, it was just kind of bland; nothing interesting or fresh about it but about a fourth quarter in the story started to pick and so did my interest. I kind of had certain expectations from this book and I felt let down in the end…some of the directions the author chose to go just seemed a little off and strange to me. But I did enjoy that the concept of the “big” secret, it was definitely different from what I’m used to reading. It was an overall good read just had some flaws that took some getting used to.

Plot:

I felt the plot was pretty much mundane and unoriginal. Like the plot was; girl goes to new school, girl meets mysterious boy who happens have big secret, etc…I don’t know, it’s just not fun to read anymore but there was originality when it came to some of the concepts. I liked that the author was creative when she explained some of the big mysterious of this world; it was so different from what I’m used to reading. It was really actually clever how she took an old idea and made it into something bigger; something semi-different from its original source. The pace of the story was slow in the beginning but started to pick up about a quarter through…I don’t know why but the beginning didn’t grab my attention…I was kind of distant from the story until later on…but I really enjoyed the organization of the plot in the book. I also felt that the book was differently focused in the first half than the last half…it was like the beginning was all focused on Jane but in the last half it was more focused on the concept of the story itself…in the end I enjoyed the first half of the book better even with the beginning being a little sketchy…the last half was just missing a certain flare that the first half seemed to have. As for the ending of the story I didn’t feel like it lacked much, I feel there were a few ends left untied but it could be a standalone book if the author desired that. So overall I enjoyed reading it but I found a few issues with the plot itself.

Romance:

Sigh…romance was definitely a huge annoyance in this book, Jane’s obsession with Lucky got old really fast…it got to the point where I wanted Lucky gone…I mean what sane girl would be that obsessive?! Ugh it’s just that I really hated the romance aspect of this book…it wasn’t all that original and though there wasn’t technically a love triangle it sure felt that way…romance did play a big part of the story and therefore skewed my liking of the book. Overall romance wasn’t a good aspect for this book.

Characters:

Jane was a really strong character in the beginning to me but she lost some of her cred as the story progressed, some of the decisions she made were just a little too bad for me to really forgive; she acted reckless at times and forgave way too easily…she just didn’t seem too sane to me but she did have personality and she did seem alive but it just took a lot of effort for me to connect and accept her. As for some of the other minor characters I did enjoy Jacob A.K.A Jake and Mary Violet, they definitely added great character and spunk to the story, it allowed me to really enjoy the book more. As for how the characters were placed within the story I felt they each belonged where they helped benefit the story best so I had no problem with that whatsoever. So overall the characters were good just had a few issues.

Transformation of the Character:

There wasn’t much of a transformation in this book, it was mainly the same characters from the very beginning…Jane kind of made a transformation but it wasn’t something I would say was very noticeable; it was more subtle and in the background…it was okay though, this story wasn’t really all about change but more of discovery.

Description:

The description in this book was one aspect I really enjoyed about this book. I thought the author did a really good job when it came to describing the forest surrounding Jane’s cottage, it was just so perfectly described that I had no problems imagining it whatsoever. And as far as the amount of description I didn’t think there was too much or too little, there was that perfect balance where there was some description that described what was happening really well but not too much as to bore the reader. I think one of the best described scenes had to have been when Jane was by herself in the forest, the senses really came alive. As far as dialogue goes it seemed realistic and true to the character to me. So overall I really loved and enjoyed this aspect of the book.

Style:

The style was in one POV and in first person, which really narrowed the world only to Jane but it kept some of the secrets that way and allowed the secrets to be unveiled when they were supposed to. One thing I didn’t like was the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, it’s okay to have them in the right place but I found them more annoying than helpful…it just really took me away from the story more than bring me closer. As for the author’s writing it was easy to read and I really had no issues there. So overall the style was good except for the quotes.

Quote of the book:

“Diamonds form deep beneath the earth’s surface and are carried up by rare and peculiar eruptions of molten lava…I had seen the world through only one facet of a crystal and believed that I was seeing reality. Yet by turning the crystal, I added dimension to my comprehension of my life and experiences.”

Last Thoughts:

I would recommend this to readers of academy based books and to those who enjoy the supernatural. This was an interesting read and it didn’t take me more than a day to finish, the beginning was a little slow though. But if there was another book to be added to this series I would be willing to give it a try…This author does really well describing her world and with a little tweaking this book could be really good…I did see some good potential. So overall It had a cool concept and read just fine.

My Rating: