13. Switched - Amanda Hocking - 2/5 STARS
I feel a bit conflicted about this book, I read the whole thing and wanted to know what was going to happen but there were so many annoying and frustrating aspects to it that I can’t say I liked/enjoyed it.
Wendy has always felt different from those around her, she feels bored and frustrated by her small life. When a mysterious newcomer starts at her school, her world is turned upside when he reveals that she has a reason to feel different… She’s a “Trylle”. Wendy finds herself in a world she never knew existed - a world both beautiful and frightening, and Wendy's not sure she wants to be a part of it.
The storyline here was not super strong, it was patchy, cliché and predictable but it did keep me interested. It focuses on Wendy trying to learn about the world she is now in, while throwing in a few unexpected twists, that are in actual fact very expected and overly obvious. There is a love triangle of sorts that really doesn’t help the story at all and feels kinda gross.
Wendy is a very unlikeable character; she is a brat from the very first chapter and does not appreciate her family in the slightest. She’s whiney and sullen and frustrating. She decides she can’t live without a boy after only knowing him for like 2 weeks, I hate that in teen fiction its so unbelievable. Also, she’s a classic Bella Swan; she thinks she’s a plain jane while everyone around thinks she’s gooooorgeous. The boy she falls for is a classic boring teen heartthrob with very little actual personality other than a sulky protectiveness. There are some more likeable characters that almost make up for the crappy ones but not quite.
Something that made me really frustrated was that our heroine was constantly kept in the dark about stuff but when the reveal would finally happen it was usually nothing, like whhhy were they keeping this a secret??? What was the point?? These secrets just didn’t do the story any favours.
You can also absolutely tell that Switched is part of the post-twilight teen-paranormal trend, it follows a lot of the same plot points and its characters are very similar. Overall, I would probably only recommend this book to maybe 11 -16-year-olds, there’s not a lot there for older readers and I feel like it would bore a lot of people.
2 Stars
