Recent Listens

Life has been pretty crazy the last few weeks, what with the Thanksgiving Holiday and all the shopping madness that follows after (not that I've been doing any shopping myself :( ). So all I've really had time for is audiobooks lately. My most recent listens were Dark Flame and Night Star by Alyson Noël and Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick. 

Dark Flame and Night Star are the two latest installments in Noël's Immortals series. I read the first couple last year and enjoyed them at first. But the longer I stick with the series the more disappointed I am. It's not bad... it just feels.... gratuitous. The angst is beginning to feel a little prolonged and a little pointless. Die Hard Twilight fans will probably enjoy it for that precise reason. If you like rolling in angst for angst's sake, then this series will probably appeal to you. More installments seem to be imminent, but I will likely fight my completionist nature and not pick them up. But then maybe I'm just disappointed that (Spoiler Alert!) Ever doesn't choose Jude over the way too perfect Damen. I always root for the underdog. It's a sickness.

Crescendo is, likewise, a sequel to Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush, Hush. I don't know why I am willing to accept Fitzpatrick's fallen angels and nephillim over Noël's immortals... but I just am. The characters of Hush, Hush and Crescendo... while still rolling in teenage angst... seem to carry with them a sincerity that the Immortals characters lack. The blundering oversights and obvious mistakes that the main character, Nora, makes are truly the sort of mistakes a teenage girl would make. What seems obvious to the reader is believably misconstrued by the characters in the story. Nora comes off not as an idiotic damsel in distress, but as a teenage girl in love with the wrong guy. She's trying to make smart decisions (mostly......) about a relationship that probably won't work out in the end, but battling her feelings, her insecurities, and the past. 

In the end, I'm not about to stop recommending the Immortals series to certain customers. Just because I didn't enjoy it, doesn't mean that others won't. I can appreciate that the series appeals to a younger crowd, but not so much to me. The Hush, Hush books, may get a little renewed enthusiasm though. I have to say that the synopsis on the dust jackets do not do this series justice. They make the stories sound frivolous and just a tad ridiculous, when what's inside is a different caliber.