Vesper

Vesper (Deviants #1)

Jeff Sampson

Pages: 288

Publisher: Balzar + Bray/ HarperCollins

Format: paperback

Source: Library

Age Group: Young Adult

Date Published: January 25, 2011

Emily Webb is a geek. And she’s happy that way. Content hiding under hoodies and curling up to watch old horror flicks, she’s never been the kind of girl who sneaks out for midnight parties. And she’s definitely not the kind of girl who starts fights or flirts with other girls’ boyfriends. Until one night Emily finds herself doing exactly that . . . the same night one of her classmates—also named Emily—is found mysteriously murdered.

The thing is, Emily doesn’t know why she’s doing any of this. By day, she’s the same old boring Emily, but by night, she turns into a thrill seeker. With every nightfall, Emily gets wilder until it’s no longer just her personality that changes. Her body can do things it never could before: Emily is now strong, fast, and utterly fearless. And soon Emily realizes that she’s not just coming out of her shell . . . there’s something much bigger going on. Is she bewitched by the soul of the other, murdered Emily? Or is Emily Webb becoming something else entirely— something not human?

As Emily hunts for answers, she finds out that she’s not the only one this is happening to—some of her classmates are changing as well. Who is turning these teens into monsters—and how many people will they kill to get what they want?

OK so, lemme just say the little blurb on Goodreads for this book stinks, so this one is from B&N. With that out of the way, on to my review!

I liked this book well enough. It did end up with some insta-love (er, I guess insta-like in this case?), but the book does give a reasonable explanation for it, and it works for me. Vesper wasn't amazing, but it was a quick, fun read, and Nighttime Emily was pretty cool... I didn't particularly enjoy Daytime Emily though. She was boring. And there was this one incident where Emily and this chick hate each other for most of the book and then all of a sudden they're like buddies. And a lot of stuff really needed to be explained. I found myself extremely confused when the book ended.

The characters were very run-of-the-mill and I dunno. I just wasn't attached to any of the secondary characters. Megan (whom I really wanted to like, because we kind of have the same name) was a whiny brat who didn't want Emily to have any friends except her. And Emily was totally cool with that. That bugged me. I mean, I honestly don't think Megan had any redeeming qualities, like at all. And then there was Patrick, who Emily spends a lot of time chasing around. I don't currently know anything about him. He was just kind of there. And then Spencer kind of ends up being important, but he's only in the book for a couple chapters. So, basically, this was a story about Emily and her changing into a confident, freaky Emily at night, and the things she did and the reasons for her changes. I didn't even really like Emily. She was just very bland. So, yeah. I'm just now figuring out that I didn't enjoy the characters....

Luckily, the cover was pretty and that makes up for something, right?

Unfortunately, this book wasn't really my cup of tea. I give it 2.5 stars (this is a first for me...) because it just wasn't very compelling. A bunch of stuff happens, with little or no explanation and I wanted to rip the characters' eyes out... I will be reading the second one just to see if more things are explained.