Review Detail

ISBN: 9780983157274
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Pages: 312

Dying sucks--and high school senior Ember McWilliams knows firsthand. After a fatal car accident, her gifted little sister brought her back. Now anything Ember touches dies. And that, well, really blows.

Ember operates on a no-touch policy with all living things--including boys. When Hayden Cromwell shows up, quoting Oscar Wilde and claiming her curse is a gift, she thinks he’s a crazed cutie. But when he tells her he can help control it, she’s more than interested. There’s just one catch: Ember has to trust Hayden's adopted father, a man she's sure has sinister reasons for collecting children whose abilities even weird her out. However, she’s willing to do anything to hold her sister's hand again. And hell, she'd also like to be able to kiss Hayden. Who wouldn't?

But when Ember learns the accident that turned her into a freak may not have been an accident at all, she’s not sure who to trust. Someone wanted her dead, and the closer she gets to the truth, the closer she is to losing not only her heart, but her life. For real this time.

I received an ARC copy of Cursed by Jennifer L. Armentrout for review from Spencer Hill Press, which on the whole, I liked but didn’t exactly love, like I thought I might have. Although I found the plot of Cursed to be a mixture of The Immortals series by Alyson Noel and X-Men, (which I have enjoying reading & watching), the writing style let the book down. Unfortunately, Cursed was written quite simplistically, and at times quite predictably. I didn’t really get attached to any of the characters as such because most of the descriptions within the book didn’t include the characters, or didn’t give much of an insight into their lives & personalities. It felt like more emphasis had been put on describing the scenery in detail, rather than on the characters, their actions & their emotions! I’m not very fond of the cover for Cursed. I feel that cover image of the model representing Ember, should have been the “right way up”, instead of upside down. Ember being laid upside-down probably represents the fact that her lie was turned upside down by the car accident; however, I believe that, Ember being laid back in the grass, upside down, with her eyes closed, could also be construed as her giving up, which isn’t inkeeping with Cursed.