Wake Review

Title: Wake (Watersong #1)
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: St.Martins Griffin
Release Date: August 7th 2012
Source: ARC for review (Thanks Raincoast)
Buy: Amazon / Book Depository

Summary:

Beautiful. 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, Thea, and Lexi have caught everyone's attention, including the eye of pratical Harper. But it's her sister, Gemma, they've chosen to be part of their group.

Sixteen-year-old Gemma seems to have it all - she's carefree, pretty and falling in love witht the boy next door. But her greatest passion has always been the water. She craves late-night swims under the stars, where she can be alone yet belong to the sea. Lately she's had company. Penn,Thea, and Lexi spend their nights dancing, singing, and partying on the cove - and one night Gemma joins them. When she wakes up groggy on the beach the next morning she knows something has changed.

Suddenly Gemma is stronger, faster, and more beautiful than ever. As she uncovers the truth about her new mythical powers. Gemma is forced to choose between staying with those she loves or entering a dark world brimming with unimaginable secrets.

Review:

Being new to Amanda Hocking's work and hearing how amazing her other series was I had high expectation going into Wake. It didn't disappoint but I did totally fall in love with it either. The take on mermaids and the mythology behind them is what really makes Wake a great book.

I have declared this year the year of the mermaid becuase of all the mermaid book releases. So far I've read quite a few of them each have a new and interesting take on mermaids. Wake stands out to me because of the use of greek mythology that surrounds the creation of the sirens in this book, and how they got to be the way they are. Learning about this had me glued to the pages wanting to learn more.

I found the book to be a bit slow to start off with, but eventually picked right up and left off with an ending that insures a thrilling sequel. The writing style was also a bit odd in my opinion, it's written in third person but it's not a style I have ever seen before. You will have to pick up the book to see what exactly I'm talkin about. Also the writing was a bit too descriptive to my liking.

Now to the chatacters, some of them I really enjoyed and some I just wanted to slap sometimes. Gemma is a great, caring, and selfless at times characters that I really liked, her sister Harper not so much. Since their mother isn't with them Harper has taken on the role of "mother" and she is definitely a mother figure that I would not want to have, she's to protective and jumps to conclusions too fast. My favourite character by far would have to be Daniel, the boat dwelling can't get his life together guy whos is super sweet and is an amazing guy.

Wake definitely peaked my interested and had me flipping through the pages for the most part. I am really interested to see where Gemma and Harper stories go in the series. Although the writing style isn't anything I've seen before it isn't so unbearable that you can't get through the book, at times it really worked well with the story. These sirens have a really gorey and evil side to them as well so I can't wait to see more of that. Overall Wake is a good but not amazing book with a very interesting back story to the myth of the siren that should go onto your reading this stat.