Gorgeous. Fearless. Dangerous. They're the kind of girls you envy; the kind of girls you want to hate. Strangers in town for the summer, Penn, Lexi and Thea have caught everyone's attention—but it’s Gemma who’s attracted theirs. She’s the one they’ve chosen to be part of their group.
Gemma seems to have it all—she’s carefree, pretty, and falling in love with Alex, the boy next door. He’s always been just a friend, but this summer they’ve taken their relationship to the next level, and now there’s no going back. Then one night, Gemma’s ordinary life changes forever. She’s taking a late night swim under the stars when she finds Penn, Lexi and Thea partying on the cove. They invite her to join them, and the next morning she wakes up on the beach feeling groggy and sick, knowing something is different.
Suddenly Gemma is stronger, faster, and more beautiful than ever. But her new powers come with a terrifying price. And as she uncovers the truth, she’s is forced to choose between staying with those she loves—or entering a new world brimming with dark hungers and unimaginable secrets.
More stories about a girl named Gemma. I should have known better than to think she would be a smart, self-respecting teen girl...but come on! This book sounded so interesting!! The first few lines are about cannibalism, which gets this YA series off to a unique start. But sadly it was all downhill from there.
So here's the plot in a nutshell: Gemma lives in a seaside town and her family is poor. She likes to swim and is awkward (because who isn't these days??) and is just starting to fall in love with neighbor boy Alex, her older sister's best friend. Enter the pretty, new girls who seem to have everything they could ever want. Except...they want Gemma *dramatic music here*
I understand every supernatural story has to have this part about who the new people are and what they're up to but this series takes it a few steps further. These girls are super duper mysterious until about 150 pages in (maybe more?). We don't even find out what they are until almost the end of book 1. What kind of story progression is that? We all know Gemma will succumb to these girls' ploy so lets get the ball rolling here!
So finally Gemma does her thing and the pretty girls want to take her home with them, but she refuses. Because who doesn't want special powers anyway? I'd MUCH rather stay in my small hometown for the rest of my life if it meant that I could love my neighbor for a few more months until he went off to college far far away! (yes, that was dripping with sarcasm)
I think my problem was that Gemma and I would have made very different decisions from day 1 in this situation. I didn't understand her reasoning behind anything--it was always some kind of long explanation for 'but I have a boyfriend now, and I think he loves me!'
So that's pretty much book 1. Books 2 and 3 are more of the same except Gemma tries to kill herself and unintentionally Alex, and her sister also gets a boyfriend. Now they can bond over how men are jerks and blah, blah, blah. Book 4 was a long, drawn out ending to book 1. The middle volumes were essentially character and world building expansions, which really weren't needed in this modern day series. Then finally, after hundreds of pages of ranting and boyfriend drama Gemma gets what she wants.
I'm not going to go into deep detail but it's definitely not the ending that I wanted. Gemma should have just sucked it up and moved on with her life--everything would have ended up for the best.
This series gets 3 stars because I was compelled to finish all the books in a timely manner. I read them all over a period of only a few weeks, in between homework and studying, so I'd say that's not bad at all. I wish this story had ended up differently or the characters had been written stronger but at the end of the day it was still an entertaining story, even if some parts were PAINFULLY slow.
I recommend this series to someone with some time on their hands who really doesn't have anything better to do.
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