Review: Intertwined by Gena Showalter

Title:  Intertwined 

Author:  Gena Showalter
Publisher:  Harlequin Teen
Publishing Date:  August 18th 2009

Pages: 440
Genre: YA Paranormal

Series:  Intertwined #1
Source:  Audio

 

There’s something about the new guy at Crossroads High…

Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him:

One can time travel.
One can raise the dead.
One can possess another human.
One can tell the future.

Everyone thinks he’s crazy, which is why he’s spent his entire life shuffled between mental institutions and juvie. All of that is about to change, however. For months Aden has been having visions of a beautiful girl—a girl who carries centuries-old secrets. A girl who will either save him or destroy him.

Together they’ll enter a dark world of intrigue and danger... but not everyone will come out alive.

This book has been on my TBR for years. I remember finding it in a bookstore and thinking this looks good and its pretty. I took it home and there it became shelf candy. I still have it on my shelf. However I did read it… or listen to it. When I thought about this year and what it would mean to me in books… reading books on my TBR and finishing series came to mind. This would be a good one to start. I did get it on audio… its so much easier for me to get through a book on audio. I had a few issues with the book at the start but in the end I found this book to be a very interesting read and I quite enjoyed it.
So Aden is a teenager that has 4 other souls living inside of him. At least that is what he thinks they are. They have been for as far back as he can remember. They each have an ability and they each give him advice on how to live his life… not to mention they keep him company since everyone one else in the world thinks he is crazy. He doesn’t know his parents. He has been shuffle from foster home an group homes throughout his entire life. He has seen multiple psychologists and no one can help him. He has learned to keep his mouth shut with only the souls in his body to keep him company. That is until the day he meets a girl that seems to have an effect on him, quieting the voices of the souls. And another girl who is very dangerous and alluring. And a werewolf. These four come together to form an interesting Scooby gang to unravel how they are connected and why they are connected and a danger that lies ahead for them all.

So this book. This book is quite interesting. It seems to be a mash up of all things supernatural. Which I really did enjoy. There are zombies, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, fairies and more. I mean it’s just crazy how much was put into this book. One would think it would really be too much… but no, in this book it works. It works well. I am a huge supernatural, paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi, and all that non real world stuff, fan. I love all the things that go bump in the night. I love that there is no true evil or good. Everyone can be either. So this book was just all kinds of goodness for me. The setting, the tone, the world building, the plot. Loved all that.

The story was a bit slow for me in the beginning… but I have had a hard time with getting completely lost in a book lately. I am blaming it on reading so many outstanding reads that it is becoming harder to top or meet those euphoric feeling standards of reads. I did though eventually get really immersed into this read. So yes the pacing was a bit off at the beginning for me but once the book took off and all the stuff of action and suspense and mystery and danger came into play… I was there so there.

The characters took a bit to warm up to also. There wasn’t anything wrong with them… I just didn’t feel there was anything special to them. They did feel like all the the other ya paranormal read characters out there. They were very stereotypical. Which for when this book was written, that was the thing. SO I didn’t hold that against them too much. Now it did take me a bit to get attached but by the end I was attached to all of them. Yes I have my favorites… but they all had their own charm and redeeming qualities. I am very excited to see them again in the next installment.

So as a read goes… this book had everything I needed to enjoy it. The characters lacked a bit in originality but the story by far made up for it and the world building was just superb. So it evened out in the end. IT did end on a bit of a cliffhanger… I mean nothing like extreme and left me wondering if someone was gonna die or anything… but there was a an “oh man, what now?” kind of moment in the end. It was left open for sure. Good thing the entire series is out.

I really did enjoy it and I am looking forward to the next book.

Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty books in paranormal and contemporary romances, as well as young adult novels. Her series include White Rabbit Chronicles, Angels of the Dark, Otherworld Assassins, Lords of the Underworld, Alien Huntress and Intertwined.

Her novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Seventeen Magazine, and have been translated all over the world. The critics have called her books "sizzling page-turners" and "utterly spellbinding stories", while Showalter herself has been called “a star on the rise”.