Book Review: Luminous

TITLE: Luminous
AUTHOR: Dawn Metcalf
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: fantasy
PREMISE: Consuela becomes part of the Flow, a fantasy world where she and teens help out the real world. But people start dying in the Flow...
MY REVIEW: I'm having a hard time reviewing this book because I'm very conflicted about it. On one hand, the writing is good, it's very creative, and was actually something new and interesting from the YA genre. For that I give the author utmost props and hope she sticks around.
But on the other hand a lot of it was confusing, Consuela was a bit of a Mary Sue, the romance was lack luster, and did I mention it was confusing? I think that was mostly due to this being the author's first book. So I'm willing to let the confusion go on the account of a lot of it being interesting. But it makes it rather hard for people to get into the book. I myself kept flip flopping between liking and disliking it and I honestly still don't know how I feel about it.
But still: CREATIVITY. In a category full of werewolves/shifters, vamps, faeries, witches, and angels, this book was so refreshing simply because for once, I didn't know what to expect. So I definitely do hope to see more ideas from this author, I just hope she works on fleshing out details more as she grows.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of Guardian of the Dead, people who don't mind quirky books
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five butterflies