Sleep No More (Charlotte Westing Chronicles #1)

MY THOUGHTS
Ever since Charlotte was three years old, she has had visions of the future. It was at that moment that her Aunt began to train her on how to be an Oracle. Then, at six, Charlotte tried to change the future, which ended up with the death of her father and her mother in a wheelchair. After that, Charlotte learned the lesson that she cannot change the future. For ten years she completely blocks out all visions, until one day a vision becomes so strong that she cannot block it. She ends up getting a vision of a murder of one of her classmates. How can she possibly not try and change this? Especially when the murders don't stop...

I was kind of iffy about this book at first just because it was compared to Wake, which was a book I read many years ago and absolutely hated it. Sorry, Wake fans. Thankfully, this was nothing like that book. This book reminded me more of Slide by Jill Hathaway. This book is mainly a thriller at heart, but it has a very unique touch of paranormal. There's the whole Oracle aspect and the visions involved, which are interesting by itself. There was also a whole bunch of other very interesting and unique abilities that Charlotte was able to unlock further along in the book. In fact, this book gets so much more hardcore, dark, and very very different as the book goes on. Can't really explain why, due to spoilers, but it was very interesting.

Charlotte's not really an abnormal main character. She's much like many other heroines. She's not enormously admirable, but she's not annoying. She's just a girl with a very interesting ability that instead of being a blessing, it's more of a curse, and she wishes she could be normal. The character in this book that really did annoy me is her Aunt. I don't dislike her, I just disliked how she withheld information from Charlotte, saying she was too young. Really, Charlotte has to live with this ability, she needs to know the dangers. If her Aunt were to only tell her these things, she could have saved Charlotte from many many things that happened in this book.

I found the unique thriller-esque way very interesting, but it did get a bit confusing at the end. It was mostly because so much was happening at the end, that there was an overload in my brain. Other than that, this book does have surprising twists to it, though some parts of it were predictable.


IN CONCLUSION
Overall, an interesting way to combine thriller and paranormal. The main reason why I only gave this a three is just that this book is very similar to other thrillers I've read, even though the whole Oracle aspect is very new. If you enjoy thrillers with a touch of paranormal, I do recommend this book!

Charlotte learned the hard way not to interfere with the future. As an oracle, she has always seen glimpses of what is to come - usually boring and insignificant events but occasionally a terrifying vision will break through. As a child, Charlotte saw the death of her aunt, Sierra and, in trying to prevent it, brought about the events leading to her father's death and the crippling of her mother. Now, Charlotte listens to Sierra's teachings and blocks every vision that she can. On the day she finally fails, she sees the murder of a classmate and, when the body is found, she is wracked with guilt about not having prevented it. As more visions come, she is approached by a stranger claiming that he can help her take control of her visions and catch the murderer, but it means betraying everything that Oracles believe in and putting herself in the crosshairs of a killer.

Sleep No More was an enjoyable, exciting novel but I felt it suffered slightly from a lack of substance. The plot was fast paced and suspenseful. I even found myself skimming some of the dialogue because I was genuinely excited by the action in the story. My most constant reading time is just before bed and I found, in reading this one, that it was actually hard to get to sleep. This pace continued until about 3/4th of the way in, when things got a little strange. At this point, the action of the plot mostly occurred on Charlotte's "Supernatural Plane". The rules in this realm were difficult to understand and, just when I thought I had a handle on them, they would change. I found this slowed down the plot a little and, in order to move forward, I had to just let go of trying to understand how that world worked and just go with it.

I think this novel could have benefited from some more interesting and compelling characters. Charlotte was boring, but seemed intelligent enough. I was surprised at how easily she allowed herself to be manipulated and how little she did to inform herself of how her power worked. To be fair, a large part of this came from the choice by the author to have Sierra act as a complete stonewall. She refuses to give Charlotte any information about her gift (or curse) and even goes so far as to deny her access to any books - locking them in her room whenever she leaves the house. I really despised this aspect to her character as she left Charlotte with no resources and without the sense of trust that would have sent her to ask Sierra for help when she was clearly in over her head. The last character that really needs discussing is Linden. Naturally, we cannot simply have a YA paranormal mystery, we have got to have a love interest. I did not feel any sparks or excitement when it came to their romance and it made me feel sorry for Charlotte, having pined away for this boy for years. The one positive thing I will say about the romance is that it ended very well. I was happy to see my suspicions confirmed and that we did not go down the typical lovecanovercomeallodds route.

The big reveal of the murderer wasn't much of a reveal at all. It didn't have the impact that I expected it to and was pretty easily predicted. I think I would have much preferred if he had turned out to be a plain ol', albeit evil, human. Once the killer was out in the open, the book slowed down considerably for me. I knew where it would be going, but it seemed to take a very roundabout route to get there. Before and after the climax, we are told quite a bit of information regarding the murderer's past and motivation that could have been much more effective were we shown it through the plot rather than told after the fact through wind-down dialogue.

Sleep No More features some particularly brutal murders, including choking, stabbing and even dismemberment. These scenes might be disturbing for some readers and I had a hard time getting through one or two of them.

This was my first foray into Aprilynne Pike's work and I am not sure that there was enough that was unique about this book to bring me back to her work in the future.