Awake - Natasha Preston

[goodreads]

Title: Awake
Author: Natasha Preston
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 336
Date read: March, 2016

Scarlett Garner doesn't remember anything before the age of four - until a car accident changes everything. She starts to remember pieces of a past that frighten her. A past her parents hid from her...and a secret that could get her killed.


I almost gave up on this book before I even started it, due to the surprisingly high number of 1-star reviews and DNF* shelvings on GoodReads. However, I'd requested an ARC from Netgalley, and figured I should at least give it a chance to make up my own mind.

I ended up being completely unable to put it down, and finished it in a day.

Mind you, I can still understand some of the things the other reviewers had problems with. The writing wasn't as tight as I could have hoped for, and there were obvious mistakes along the way (e.g. the main character was 16 when the book started and 15 when it ended...), but as it was an ARC, I could chalk that up to it being an uncorrected proof, and that these were issues that would (hopefully) be caught by an editor before actually being published.

But occasional sloppy writing aside, the plot just grabbed me from page 1 and wouldn't let me go. It had some awesome twists along the way, which left me gaping and I just had to know what happened next. The writing might have bothered me more in a less captivating book, but as it was, it diminished to just being something I noticed from time to time, but which didn't really pull me out of the book.

The quick romance didn't bother me. I've seen love at first sight happen too often to dismiss it as "unrealistic". It might not be the norm, but it's definitely not unheard of either.

So 5 stars for a gripping book I couldn't put down. Minus 1 star for the writing and slight plotholes near the end.

* Did-Not-Finish