11/26/11

Review: Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Series: Touch, book #1

Published: December 16th 2008

Publisher: Hyperion

Details: Hardcover, 252 pages

My rating: 3/5

My Summary:

Similar plot to Twilight, as in girl gets rescued by mysterious boy in near car accident at the school parking lot, then is teamed up as lab partners with said boy, who acts strange around her. But despite the similarities, it holds its own, because it is well written, with witty dialogue and with a very likable heroine. I really enjoyed this book. Sequel is called Deadly little lies.

My Full Review:

I heard from other reviewers that this book was a real page-turner. Which is exactly what it was. I read it in one sitting, and that was not my intention when I sat down with it.

When I first started reading it I was struck by the similarities to Twilight. Camelia, the heroine is saved in a near car accident at the school parking lot by a mysterious guy, then teamed up with said guy as lab partners in class. This guy, Ben, is mysterious and an outcast in school. And all though not vampire, he’s got this whole “if I get too close to you I might kill you” kind of thing going on. Pretty much like Twilight.

Yet, somehow it works, and I got sucked into the story anyway. A number of reasons to this:

Firstly, I liked the heroine. She’s witty, tough and has got a reasonable voice. I could feel myself agreeing with most of her decisions. Except for possibly putting herself into the most dangerous situations, but I guess there would be no story otherwise. I also grew fond of her two friends, real funny the way they kept bickering at each other.

There is also a stalker following Camelia, and his diary notes are inserted here and there so that we get to follow his twisted thoughts. That was really creepy and had me on the edge of my seat most of the time. The identity of the stalker is unknown. Of course, seeing as the weird phone calls and letters start about the same time as Ben arrives at her school makes Ben a primary suspect. Yet, we don’t know until the very end, and I for one, was surprised to find out who it was.

The one thing where it may have been lacking slightly for me was the chemistry between Camelia and Ben. Seeing as we don’t get to know that much about Ben it’s hard to follow how they are so connected. I didn’t feel it. Maybe it develops into something more in the following books. I hope so.

Ben’s strange abilities are also somewhat fuzzily explained, and I didn’t completely understand why it was so dangerous for him to be touching Camelia.

Nevertheless, because of great suspense and a likeable heroine I still enjoyed reading this first installment of the Touch series, and I will probably read the sequel Deadly Little Lies soon.

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