Okay, I'm going to start out by saying that I LOVED this book, it was fantastic and I couldn't put it down, like literally in was two hundred pages in when I had to go to college and I spent the two hours that I was in class thinking about where I'd left off and then I was straight back to it when I got home. As soon as the book was finished I immediately sent an email to my contact at the publishers demanding a copy of the sequel when it becomes available...
Yeah, I loved this book.
But it didn't start that way for me, for the first couple of chapters I didn't think that the book was something that I was going to enjoy because it just didn't seem to be gripping me in, I think maybe that is because the first couple of chapters are jam packed with description but not much dialogue, but soon I began to get gripped as the characters were introduced and we start to wonder exactly why Sophie has moved so far away. What kept me reading through that slow time was the setting, I love out there settings and a little island off the Scottish coast was so amazing to read about, and the weather seriously set the tone for the book!
It took me a lot longer to get to grips with Sophie's character, I was wary because she is described as super beautiful, super intelligent and can even play the harp but later I realised how all of this ties in with who she is (I'm trying to not put spoilers in this review, so I'm being vague), and I also got a bit annoyed about how cynical she is about the place where she has moved because she chose to go there, couldn't she have like Googled the place or something? In the end though, I started to like her and by the end I was so attached to her character that i was almost crying... so my feelings managed to turn three sixty!
I loved the romance aspect, it went the opposite way to how I thought it was going to go at the start, the boy that I thought was the good boy wasn't and the one that I thought was the bad guy turned out to be the swoonworthy good boy, the romance didn't develop too slowly but it also avoided being instant and you readers know that if I despise anything it's insta-love.
The storyline was amazing, I was so wondering where it was going in the beginning but by the middle you think you know exactly what's going to happen but it doesn't! There are so many twists and turns in this book but I loved where the storyline went, the ending left me speechless and now I am dying for Riven, the next in the series.
Overall, I think I can sum it up by saying that this book literally left me on the edge of my seat and absolutely speechless, because of a bit of a slow start and a problem getting to grips with the main character I can't say that this book was full grade, but it's definitely nearly there.
Overall Rating: A-