Gabriella Poole

I didn't hate this book - I just really didn't like it. At least it was short and I read it quickly.

Cassie is very poor, but very intelligent - we can guess, because she won this prestigeous scholarship, although her behaviour and choices do not seem very intelligent. She goes to Paris, to study at Darke Academy, she meets two fascinating boys, a friendly roommate and a group of enemies - nothing new here, except maybe The Few, because I still don't know for sure what kind of creatures they are.

Generally, I think this book was rather boring and I'm definitely not going to read the rest of this series.… (mer)

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. I read it in one sitting because I was really curious about what was going on at the school. However, we don't find out until the end, and it's not explained very well. I also don't understand why Cassie took it so completely in her stride- it didn't feel like a normal reaction to what had happened. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, and it took me until the end of the book to understand who everybody was. That said, there was something strangely appealing about it, and I'm looking forward to reading the next book- which will hopefully have more of a story and also some proper explainations.… (mer)

My thoughts on this book can be summed up in three words: I don't care.

I don't care that Cassie is possessed by Estelle. I don't care that Jake is on some mission to find out what happened to his sister. I don't care that Cassie has extraordinary powers. I don't care about the Few, I don't care about Ranjit, I don't care about the school, all if it is pointless to me.

I have a real issue with boarding schools in books nowadays because there seems to be complete lack of rules. Students ditch class, no exams or assessment, there's nothing actually school-like about it. Cassie regularly ditches class to go shopping with Isabella with no punishment. Besides that, these kids seem to have the run of the school. They conform to their own rules and being in class happens so infrequently in the novel it makes me think the author's reminded herself she's set the story in a school so probably should have a school moment or two somewhere even though they attribute nothing to the plot at hand.

I originally went into this series liking Cassie, but that waned in book two as it seemed nothing she did was her fault. It's not her fault she feeds on Isabella, it's not her fault Estelle makes her almost kill people, everyone is quick to let her get away with everything and either blame themselves or a higher power for the problem.

I'm done with the series. Like I said, I don't care. And rule number one when writing fiction should be creating characters a reader cares about.… (mer)