{Review} Unbreakable by Kami Garcia

Unbreakable (The Legion #1)

Kami Garcia

Pages: 305

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Format: Hardcover

Source: Library

Age Group: YA

Date Published: October 1, 2013

Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in this action-packed paranormal thriller, the first book in a new series from New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia.
I never believed in ghosts. Until one tried to kill me.
When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, her world begins to unravel. She doesn’t know that paranormal forces in a much darker world are the ones pulling the strings. Not until identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into Kennedy’s room and destroy a dangerous spirit sent to kill her. The brothers reveal that her mother was part of an ancient secret society responsible for protecting the world from a vengeful demon — a society whose five members were all murdered on the same night.
Now Kennedy has to take her mother’s place in the Legion if she wants to uncover the truth and stay alive. Along with new Legion members Priest and Alara, the teens race to find the only weapon that might be able to destroy the demon — battling the deadly spirits he controls every step of the way.
Suspense, romance, and the paranormal meet in this chilling urban fantasy, the first book in a new series from Kami Garcia, bestselling coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures novels.

One word to describe Unbreakable would have to be intense. The whole fast-paced "come with me if you want to live" thing added to Kennedy's desperation to be accepted along with learning about lore and battling ghosts and demons definitely made for some heart-pounding reading. I plowed through the entire book in like two and a half hours, if that's any indication. I felt like it was a little too fast-paced, but it definitely hooked me. 

Hunters. I said a little while back that I wanted more hunters in my books. And Unbreakable has the whole rock-salt guns and general badassery that I was looking for. I love Supernatural with a fiery passion, and the fighting and the lore and the journals of Unbreakable were remiscent of the show. I thought the idea of "the Legion" was really interesting, too. The five people meant to fight a big scary demon, possibly not together, was really interesting. I liked how the teens were all sort of struggling to keep their heads above water in the fight. They had no guidance, no one to tell them what they were doing or if they were even going in the right direction.

I liked the characters. Kennedy reminded me of someone falling down a hill and whenever she latched onto something she'd start falling again. She had really fast character development, I guess, so I never really felt like I knew her. I always felt like I knew the people she thought about better than her. I mean, yeah she liked to draw, and she wore dark skinny jeans, and she's "normal" looking, but I felt like I never really went a lot deeper with her character. I didn't dislike her, of course. She made an acceptable narrator, but I just felt like I wanted to get to know her better.

It was the same with all the characters, really. From the very beginning, I knew she liked Jared better. I just couldn't really tell why. And sometimes, that's fine, and it's actually a good think, like you fall for the boy along with the girl, and you don't realize it's happening until you can't stop thinking about him. Unfortunately, I just sort of felt like what Kennedy had for Jared was a sort of infatuation. He's hot and mysterious and supposedly like her in the way that he doesn't want anyone to get close to him, but what else is there than that? I'd write another paragraph about his brother, Lukas, but he was even more of a wet blanket. Because he was just sort of there, and he liked Kennedy but I didn't know why.

I did really like reading about Priest and Alara. Priest was such a dork, and he was a mechanical engineer, which is cool beans with me. I liked his weapons and his nerdiness and his music. And Alara was a badass. She was tough and learned cool supernatural things from her Haitian grandmother. Which is totally sick. I loved her from the moment she came in.

I think my main problem with the book was that it was too fast. I think that if it had been longer, if I knew more about Kennedy's backstory, if it took place over weeks instead of days it would have been awesome. I just felt like it flew by, and not enough went into each character and their adventures. I did like it though. Please don't get me wrong, I just wanted more from it. I will most certainly be reading the next book.