04 May, 2015

#BookReview :: Never Forgotten (Never Forgotten #1) by Kelly Risser

One minute Meara Quinn is making plans for the summer before her senior year. The next she finds out that her mother's cancer has returned and they're moving away from the only home she's ever known. Every day becomes a struggle as Meara tries to cope with her mother's illness while being forced to move to another country to live with grandparents who are strangers. 

Add weird visions of a father who was absent her entire life and top it all off with one whopping secret that everyone seems bent on keeping from her, and Meara has the perfect ingredients for a major melt down. The only things keeping her from coming unglued are some new friends and Evan—the son of her mother's childhood friend—who seems to know Meara almost better than she knows herself. 

Together with Evan and her friends, Meara embarks on a new journey to unlock the secrets that will not only tell Meara who she is, but what she is.

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Life as you know it can change within minutes and Meara Quinn has just realized that fact.  One minute she was planning out her summer vacation and the next she finds out that she is moving to a different country altogether. With her mother’s cancer returning, she is forced to move to live with her grandparents, who she’s never met before. It takes a toll on her to handle her mother’s cancer while simultaneously settling down in a different country with virtual strangers. To make things tougher for her, she starts getting dreaming of a father she has never known. One would think that it is enough of a mystery but there’s more… there is a secret that the family seems to be keeping from Meara. Will this young girl be able to handle everything or will it all turn out to be too much for her?

I really could not connect with Meara at all. With a terminally ill parent, I would have expected her to devote some time to the dying person. I never expected Meara to give up her life for her mother, but I did expect her to have her priorities right. She seemed very much childish and whiny most of the book. I also did not really ‘get’ the insta-attraction between Meara and Evan.  I felt no connection with Meara and as such I failed to enjoy the book completely. I have to admit though that the secondary characters are much better developed… specially Meara’s Grandma – I loved her. Even Evan seems like a much better character than Meara. I have to give it to the author for the fact that I completely failed to guess the family secret. I knew where it was going, but failed to catch the actual point. It was an interesting change and even more so as I wasn’t expecting a fantasy/mythological twist in this book – not from the blurb at least. The author’s narration style is something different. It felt stingy and abrupt at the beginning but once I got into the story I actually started enjoying this style of her’s.

My failure to connect with the protagonist left me not enjoying this book as much as I would have if only Meara was a bit more loveable.


Review Copy received via NetGalley


2 comments:

  1. Seems like an emotional story with mystery, would be a nice read.. Thanks for the review

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  2. Your review leaves me intrigued. Which also means that this is definitely an interesting book.

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