***SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SO MANY SPOILERS***
Aw, man, I’m so disappointed with this book, I WANT TO CRY.
But let me start this review by saying Alienated was one of my favorite reads of 2013 (I got a review copy from NetGalley)--I thoroughly enjoyed it, the quirky and so likable heroine Cara, her unique voice and humor; the awkward and literally out-of-this-world-cute hero Aelyx, their delicious slow burn romance, the compelling plot and writing, and how it all comes together in this extremely entertaining, romantic, and fun story about an alien who comes to Earth to live with a family of humans in hopes to strengthen the bonds between the races and thus help form an alliance from which everyone can benefit.
So what was my problem with this sequel? Well, they were several actually:
-Cara willing to live on L’eihr + it’s like she doesn’t even care about her parents anymore: one of the things I liked about the first book was that it stayed away from the absent parents trope--Cara’s mom and dad were both in the picture, and they were wonderful and caring, imposed certain limits, would scold her if needed, and basically behaved like the normal parents of a teenager. In Invaded, Cara goes to L’eihr to do her thing and her parents stay on Earth, so of course I understand the lack or scenes between them, BUT she scarcely mentions them throughout the whole story, even when she’s having doubts about living on L’eihr, it’s like they weight nothing on her cons list. When the parents finally do show up (twice, I think), it happens in completely unnecessary scenes, barely have any dialogue, and I guess we’ll never know what they think of their daughter’s decision to move to another galaxy because there’s not even a goodbye scene. It made me so sad when David was considering becoming a L’eihr colonist because he had nothing waiting for him on Earth, no parents or siblings, and meanwhile there’s Cara, who has the whole package, but she’s still happy to go live in this alien planet full of extremely hostile people--because that means unlimited and unsupervised Aelyx time, just think of all the sex they can have.
-So many Cara & Jaxen creepy scenes vs. scarcely any Cara & Aelyx scenes: are you f***** kidding me?? What was that all about? I wanted cute Cara & Aelyx moments, and instead I got numerous disturbing scenes where Jaxen finds all the excuses to be alone with Cara, and to get all touchy. Granted, there’s no love triangle, but at what cost? Meanwhile, Cara and Aelyx only have a couple of scenes “together”, during the whole book, that’s when they talk “on the phone”---and, sometimes, even those scenes aren’t there, we’re just told they’ve happened. Something they do a lot? Fight, get jealous of each other, they even break up at some point. I DID NOT need these tropes, they’re silly, they’re annoying, they bored me to tears, they even made me hate Aelyx at some point because he was being a jackass.
-That exceedingly uncomfortable Sh’ovah scene: in order to become a citizen of L’eihr, Cara must go through this ceremony where she stands completely naked in front of hundreds of L’eihrs, who will, one by one, smear mud on her body. I’m sorry but to me this just felt like yet another gratuitous humiliating moment for Cara---she didn’t want to do it, and I was so, so disgusted, angry, and just plain uncomfortable the whole time. So what if the L’eihr doesn’t sexualize the naked body? They behave like a bunch of stupid teenagers on a normal day, how am I supposed to believe they don’t care about a naked and vulnerable girl they can gaze upon all they want and even touch? It was goddamn creepy, that’s what it was. Even more if you consider that, Jaxen, the guy who’s always finding excuses to touch her, was there too. If that was a ceremony for Cara to be accepted as an equal member of the society, why weren’t they ALL naked? It would still be creepy, but not as much as the actual scene.
-L’eihr was not that different from Earth + it’s like Cara left a normal high school experience on Earth, and entered a cliché teen movie on L’eihr: another of my favorite things about Alienated was that Cara was a nerd and proud of it, that she socialized with everybody without being miss popularity, had a few good friends, and that there were no silly popular kids making her life hell—and then she goes to L’eihr, this place where people are supposed to be extremely smart and balanced, and not emotional at all, and she’s bullied left and right. Of course I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome, but seriously why do the L’eihr behave like a bunch of mean cheerleaders and stupid jocks?
-That weird make out scene: so when they finally reunite almost at the end of the book, after months of separation, Cara and Aelyx immediately run to find a room, and when they do, clothes start coming off, and let me just explain how NOT hot or exciting or romantic that scene was for me---right before this, when Cara was still on board of her transport, Jaxen had drugged her, taken a sample of her blood, and the gods know what else, because she falls quickly asleep under the influence of the drugs, and the next time we hear from her, is when she gets off the transport and reunites with Aelyx (in a very awkward manner, I wish they had just run into each other’s arms, but okay). So at that point, as a reader, I had NO IDEA whatsoever of what Jaxen had done to her. Had that been only a sleeping drug, or something else? What had he done with her blood? Was that even the real Cara or someone pretending to be Cara? Or even a clone?? After all, Jaxen has all those weird powers and, by then, I had been told these aliens could easily change their appearance, so--how in the world could I enjoy a romantic scene between Cara and Aelyx when the whole time I wasn’t even sure that was Cara? And why didn’t she say something when she woke up, or got off the transport?
-David and Syrine: I guess David and Syrine were supposed to be the new Cara and Aelyx, the new alien & human couple, the new protagonists of a cute and exciting slow burn romance (which turned out to be not slow at all). Well, the thing is, nothing can make me stop disliking Syrine, nothing, and the fact that she had so many scenes in this book didn’t help--my dislike just kept growing. About David, I was somewhat entertained by the character at the beginning, until he and Aelyx started coming up with tricks to make Syrine let her guard down for him, and it doesn’t matter how much I don’t like Syrine, that was f****** repulsive. If there’s one thing I hate, is a guy who pretends to be something he’s not just to get laid and then even brags about it to his homies, ”and that, my friend, is how it’s done” *wink*. Repulsive.
-Syrine being the one who helps with Cara’s decision + everything on Earth is suddenly boring: towards the end of the book Cara finally starts having serious doubts about moving to L’eihr permanently, but I didn’t even had time to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, because just a few scenes later she has a little chitchat, not with her parents, or with her brother, or with her human best friend, but with her new bestie Syrine and “oh yeah, L’eihr, here I come!”. Honestly, I felt pretty cheated with this whole situation and how it unfolded, because Cara spends a couple of months in L’eihr missing Earth, and then she comes back to Earth and “oh, no, I don’t belong here anymore, college will be waste of my time anyway, and chocolate tastes gross now, so byyyeee, y’all, bye!” Too forced.
Wow, that was long.
I really wish I didn’t feel like this towards this book, but I’m just so disappointed and angry, and regretting that I read it in the first place--hell, that I bought a hardcover--that I can only rant. But I'm mostly pissed because Invaded tainted the memory of the first book for me, the story that I enjoyed so much, and the characters that I used to love. I’ll never be able to look at Cara and Aelyx the same way--before they were special, now they’re just another couple of walking hormones.
It pains me to say it but Alienated should have remained a standalone.