Rowena’s review of Struck by Jennifer Bosworth.
Main Character: Mia Price
Love Interest: Jeremy
Series: None, that I can tell
Author: Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.
Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.
Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.
I requested this book because the blurb sounded pretty interesting but I’m sorry to say that I didn’t enjoy this book nearly as much as I wanted to. This book reminded me of A Beautiful Dark by Jocelyn Davis. This story revolves around good versus evil but the evil guys in this book are what people that are much like Christians in real life. I mean, the evil guys in this book have a prophet, apostles, adhere to strict ways of living (that aren’t unfamiliar with Christians) etc and I found that I just wasn’t a fan. Because this book is written for a younger audience, I wasn’t comfortable with how similar the bad guys in this book were to Christians.
But aside from that, Mia drove me absolute bonkers. I couldn’t connect with her on anything and a lot of the things that I couldn’t stand about her are things that I absolutely hate about Elena from Vampire Diaries. Her attitude of “do as I say, not as I do” toward her brother Parker made me want to punch her in the throat more than once. Her bad attitude came off as more annoying than bad ass and there were too many times when I wanted to kick her in the shins (even up to the very end) and be done with it.
So the lowdown of the story is like this: Mia Price is addicted to getting struck by lightning (which gives her a dark kind of power that she’s scared of) and after a terrifying incident with her best friend Janna, Mia and her family move away to Los Angeles where it doesn’t rain all that much. A big earthquake happens which changes the Los Angeles we all know and love now into something similar to a dystopian novel. Things change, Mia and Parker’s Mom checks out emotionally and physically and Mia is left to take care of her younger brother.
When Mia and Parker finally go back to school, it’s to find out that the school is divided into Seekers and Followers. The Seekers find out about Mia’s special dark powers and they want her to join their side. The same with the Followers. The thing about Mia’s powers is, I didn’t know what they were. Even at the end when she’s doing her thing, I still didn’t know what the hell she was doing. She can burn people? Umm, okay.
The romantic love interest in this book is Jeremy. I forgot his last name but his name was Jeremy and I liked him best of all the characters in the book. I knew that he was a good person inside and out even though at first, it’s unclear what his purpose in stalking Mia was. My main issues stemmed from the fact that all throughout this book, I couldn’t connect with Mia. I didn’t like her and therefore, didn’t really care if she succeeded in saving the world or not.
I mean, I liked that Mia cared enough about her family that she would do anything for them but the way that she went about it all made me want to kick her in the teeth more than it made me want to cheer her on.
I liked Parker, I liked Jeremy but that’s about all I liked about this book so I can’t recommend this book. It just wasn’t for me but I hope that whoever reads this review doesn’t take just my word for it. Here are some bloggers that seemed to enjoy this book a lot more than I did.
Bookworm1858
A Cupcake and a Latte
Read Me, Bookmark Me, Love Me
..and that’s your scoop!
Buy the book: B&N|Amazon|Book Depository
Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
