TITLE: Mercy
Book 1 in the Mercy Trilogy
AUTHOR: Rebecca Lim
PUBLISHED: 2011 (in US)
CATEGORY: Young Adult
GENRE: angels, urban fantasy, romance
PREMISE: Mercy goes from body to body in exhile helping humans better their lives.
MY REVIEW: If I can sum up one word for this novel, I would say pretentious. It felt like the author thought she was doing this great thing when really all it was is just another cheesy YA angel book. Granted, there is some creativity and ideas going on here. I was intrigued at first by the mystery of the sister, Mercy's purpose, and the main plot idea. But all that is derailed by tropes upon tropes and bad writing.
First of all, Mercy is a Mary Sue of the worst kind. She's one of those "I'm deep and all other women are shallow and have problems I must fix for them" type of Sues a la Anita Blake and I seriously hate that. Seriously author you must hate other females don't you? At least that's the conclusion I have to draw when Mercy snarks about other females automatically after only one conversation but miraculously has no problem with guys (who of course all think she's awesome). The amount the B word is used to describe females in this book is ridiculous. Especially when one considers Mercy is supposed to be an Angel. If she's an Angel why does she curse so much, thinks rude thoughts about people who don't praise her, and on one occasion drink? Look, I don't like the goody two-shoes angels either (see my rant about Halo) but this is rather ridiculous.
The book is also not helped by how of course Mercy winds up being special, she has a insta romance with the emo brother who has little to no personality either, I didn't at all understand why Mercy was put into Carmen's body in the first place (insecurity doesn't really seem to be a needs a angel problem), the rushed ending, dragging middle, and again bad writing with cheesy dialogue. Oh, also it pays no attention to angel mythology whatsoever.
It's a shame too, I had such high hopes for this one. But sadly it's yet another angel book that I didn't like. I really need to stop trying these things out so far I've only found like three that I actually like and one of those (Hush Hush) is honestly not that great, it's just a guilty pleasure. Sigh, angel books, why can't you be better?
WHO SHOULD READ: angel book fans, Hush Hush fans, Fallen fans
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five choirs
I'm Curious if you have read the book Unearthy by cynthia Hand and what you thought of it?
ReplyDeleteThe passinate bookworm
I've read it and I quite liked it. It's honestly one of the few angel books I've actually liked. Granted I still found a bit of it silly and wished the main character could have been more fleshed out but for a first book not bad.
ReplyDelete