Review Detail

The premise of Pretty Dark Nothing was quite interesting – Qiunn Taylor has been tormented by her dreams which are now bleeding into reality. The dreams are actually demons who are continuously taunting her – whispering ugly truths and cruel lies into her mind. She thinks she is going insane and feeling absolutely hopeless – her father left their family and got a new one, a fellow cheerleader is out to get whatever she had, her boyfriend leaving her for said cheerleader and now she is being attacked by the demons too, who say there is no escape for her. Aaron, a classmate, has psychic powers and can enter the minds of people whom he touches. He is unreasonably drawn to her, and keeps saving her from her demons, but she can’t even confide her fears to him.

The plotline of the book is interesting but loses its path somewhere in the middle. There is a lot of highschool drama which threatens to drown out the paranormal aspect of the book. Sure, the drama serves to escalate things the demons cause but at times, it seems too unbelievable. Her classmates, for example, shunning her one moment and then welcoming her the next. How did she become cheerleading captain again, for that matter? The demons sure didn’t help with her grades, that’s for sure. Not to mention, her disgusting pining over Jeff when she has this connection with Aaron. Throughout the book, things seem pretty hopeless for her and more than once you thing – she is going to kill herself. Towards the end, things are finally cleared out and explained so reaching the end sure overrode the boring middle.

The writing was the high point of the book – totally realistic and full of dark tones. You can imagine the scene as it is being explained in the book – just right, without too much description to hamper plot progress. The characters seemed a bit fickle, though, so I wouldn’t really praise the character development. Character-wise, I didn’t really like or connect to any. The ending, however, packed a nice punch and left a cliffhanger that makes you wonder when the next book is going to be announced, so there’s that. Overall, good but not if you like to avoid high school drama.