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Significance #1-5

Significance Series Boxset: Books 1-5

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The first five books and novellas in the bestselling Significance series.

A series by NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling author, Shelly Crane.

Maggie is a seventeen year old girl who's had a bad year. Her mom left, her dad is depressed, she's graduating, barely, and her boyfriend of almost three years dumped her for a college football scholarship. Lately she thinks life is all about hanging on by a thread and is gripping tight with everything she has.

Then she meets Caleb. She saves his life, and when they bond with each other she sees their future life together flash before her eyes. She learns that not only is she his soul mate, and can feel his heartbeat in her chest, but there is a whole other world of people with gifts and abilities that she never knew existed. She herself is experiencing supernatural changes unlike anything she's ever felt before and she needs the touch of his skin to survive. Now, not only has her dad come out of his depression to be a father again, and a pain as well, but Caleb's enemies know he's imprinted and are after Maggie to stop them both from gaining their abilities and take her from him.

Can Caleb save her or will they be forced to live without each other after just finding one another? And can the rival family that's now awoken like a sleeping giant be stopped before it all goes up in flames?

SIGNIFICANCE
ACCORDANCE
DEFIANCE
REVERENCE
INDEPENDENCE

1441 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 10, 2019

127 people are currently reading
232 people want to read

About the author

Shelly Crane

37 books5,818 followers
Shelly is a NEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY bestselling author from a small town and loves everything about the south. She hoards paperbacks, devours sweet tea, searches year-round for candy corn, loves to site-see in the new areas they travel to with her husband's job, and adores reading but doesn’t have much time to these days with all the characters filling her head begging to come out.

Her own books happen by accident and she revels in the writing and imagination process. She doesn't go anywhere without her notepad for fear of an idea creeping up and not being able to write it down immediately, even in the middle of the night, where her best ideas are born.

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Jane.
Author 1 book20 followers
October 25, 2022
This series was SO fuego. I’m obsessed. It was definitely insta-love, but I needed something like that rn. Sweet af relationship where all the drama was external which I lovedddddd. YA— I know, shocking I would read YA, and also it’s fade to black.

Loved the world building, characters, plot, romance and basically everything else. Scratched that 2010s itch for sure.
Profile Image for Radiant.
1,179 reviews30 followers
June 8, 2018
The complete significance set!If this isnt paradise then i donot know what is..reading maggies and calebs story is my fav thing to do and i can read them again n again..and all series at one place..woho!
76 reviews
August 30, 2020
WARNING: This review is full of spoilers.

Significance was one of the first books I read that wasn't assigned by school a long time ago, but I'd never gotten past the first one. I remembered really liking it, so on a bout of nostalgia, I decided to try the series. While the concept of the Virtuoso is interesting in itself, unfortunately, Shelly Crane didn't know how to develop it and the series itself fell flat.

Now, I have a number of issues with this series, and I'll try to list them all here, but my main one was the GRAMMAR. It is my understanding that these books were self-published, and therefore, didn't have an editor, but that is no excuse. The kinds of mistakes I was seeing here were primary school level stuff. I think someone seriously needs to send Ms. Crane a detailed explanation on the difference between 'passed' and 'past' because she clearly does not know.

Another thing that really bothered me was the overall focus of the story. Like I said, I found the idea of significants very interesting, and I think a lot could have been done with it, but unfortunately, Ms. Crane chose to have almost all of the focus on the relationship itself, which made the story a little repetitive and boring. I mean, we get it, they need each other to live, but do we need to read about that on every page? I think once explained, this aspect of the story should've taken a backseat to the conflict. That way, the story wouldn't become stale so quickly.

The conflict, however, was another big issue of mine. It just felt very fabricated and completely unnecessary to me. I know that all story conflicts are fabricated, obviously, but a mark of a good author is making it feel natural. The entire London trip felt like one avoidable mess. Couldn't she just have showed everyone everything that happened the minute she got there? She would incriminate the Watsons while acquitting Caleb and herself. She should have shown the council her vision the minute she was alone with them and that would effectively have gotten them off her back. Rodney's death also felt like a ploy for cheap tears and had no real meaning or ramification in the story. And the whole thing with the Watsons was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, their motivations were iffy at best, and there is never any explanation for why there was this one family of Aces that was evil incarnate with no redeeming qualities (Haddock is not enough) and no real motivations (what were they trying to achieve?). Maggie literally went into Marcus' mind and described it as "pure evil". And that coin can be flipped on the Jacobsons too. They were a giant family of perfect people, which is totally unreasonable. Every family, no matter how loving, has some bad apples, especially a huge family such as theirs. But for some reason, everyone was completely perfect and their one "big flaw" was complacency. (eye roll).

On that note, Maggie and Caleb's relationship itself was too devoid of conflict. I mean, I understand that they were made for each other, but there should still be - at the very least - one or two bumps in the road. There is no such thing as perfect people; there could've been something about them learning to love the other's flaws as well as their virtues, but they had no flaws. And what Ms. Crane did to compensate was to have an excessive amount of external conflicts, rather than a healthy balance of external and internal which, after a while, also became ridiculous. They couldn't have a second to breathe before something went down. I mean the Watsons' -especially Marcus'- blind and baseless determination to kill them? torture them? be better than them? stop them? Who even knows, but their determination was incredible. Even when they'd already lost like five times, they still went after our protagonists. Why? What were they even getting out of it? Does anyone know? Seriously, I'm still confused. "Because they're evil" just doesn't do it for me.

Another big problem I had with the story was how predictable it was. I mean, when Maggie's brother imprinted on Caleb's sister. (huge eye roll). Their entire relationship was melodramatic and exhausting, and it didn't help that their characters were some of the worst. Bish was the most infuriating character. He was completely unreasonable and his 'protectiveness' - that the author constantly justified - was absurd. Like, no, it is not okay to forcibly remove your 17 almost 18 year old sister from her boyfriend's lap because they were making out. Even if they had been having sex (which of course they weren't because they were pure and innocent, as the author constantly reminded us (mega eye roll)), it was none of his business. And then when he was finally imprinted, he became the biggest hypocrite on the face of the Earth. Jen was also one of the most one-dimensional characters (preceded only by the Watsons and Maggie's mother). She was constantly sulking for no reason. And then, because that wasn't enough, Maggie's middle-aged father also imprinted! Because, logically, the super rare event of a human imprinting with an Ace is literally the norm in the heroine's family. Everybody needs to become an Ace. Obviously.

Yet another gripe I had with the story was how every character had the same voice. Because of Maggie's mind-reading abilities, we got to be in every character's mind, and they all thought the same. Used the same expressions. Same tone. Same slang, even. Everything. I know that they were all from Tennessee, but that doesn't explain how multiple characters, varying vastly in age and gender, all spoke and thought the same exact way. The author obviously didn't know how to write multiple voices, and it showed.

And finally, this is kind of a dumb complaint, but something that really, really bothered me was how Maggie and Caleb always went to bed without brushing their teeth. I'm not saying that regular tooth brushing scenes are necessary (or even wanted) in books, but because Shelly Crane was constantly going into detail about their bedtime routine, it bugged me that she always overlooked this. Seriously, if you go back and read every scene where they go to bed/fall asleep (there are like a million of these), they only mention tooth brushing once. They do mention it one other time, but only when they wake up, and in this particular scene, they mention opening new toothbrushes, actually, which proves that they didn't use them the night before.

Other minor complaints I have about the series are:
- Kyle's entire arc and how his character was handled. I really thought the author exaggerated in how childish he was after he "lost" Maggie to Caleb. I mean, he spared no thought to his cousin and life-long best friend. Even when he realized his behavior was wrong and apologized, he did it only to Maggie. And after that, he completely faded into the background. Even his friendship with Maggie was completely nonexistent. It just bothered me because I thought he had great potential, and I found him and Lynne way more interesting than Jen and Bish.
- The overdone trope of the main character saying she's average-looking, only for the whole world to wax poetry about her beauty while half of the male population fell in love with her.
- Maggie's mother was (also) portrayed as this asshole with no motivations or redeeming qualities.
- Maggie's 'insecurities' were often stupid and eye-roll inducing.
- How Caleb constantly said Maggie was so funny, but she was not. At all.
- There were a few inconsistencies with people's names and careers throughout the series. This to me is a capital offense; I believe authors really need to keep track of what has been previously said in their own books.

.....


Other than that, I guess I enjoyed Maggie and Caleb's story...? xD
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for DS.
79 reviews1 follower
June 16, 2020
Ugh. I can't believe I read this entire series. By the end I was jus so glad it was over. This has to be the most poorly written set of books I've ever read. So many cringe worthy lines and a story you had to actually plod through as if thigh high in deep soul sucking mud. Wow. Finishing this series was a monumental effort and I'm still confused by why I actually took it on. There are so many wonderful YA books out there, do yourself a favor and pass on this one.
1 review
May 8, 2022
significance series beautiful

I wish it movie u had no
Idea how many I read love celeb and Maggie love significance story wish it in movie or season and why I put 5 star cos this story lot of different kind of like romance, comdy etc. lot i love it
1 review
July 17, 2022
This book series is written phenomenally and the story line pulls you in until you want to hear more! Caleb and Maggie’s romance and love story is heart wrenching and makes you wonder why it can’t happen to you irl. Thank you Shelly Crane for writing us this amazing book series!
Profile Image for Lyndsey Grant.
76 reviews
May 20, 2021
Got the entire series individually, now the box set

Absolutely love this series, I already own them individually but couldn't resist the box set too. Beautifully written story of Destiny, love and loyalty. A must for young teen to infinity.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews

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