Book Review: The Wanderers

Title: The Wanderers

Author: Jessica Miller

Genre: YA Paranormal

Book Blurb:

What do you do when you learn your family is the one who's holding all the secrets? Secrets that could get you killed...

Ella is looking forward to starting college in the fall with her best friend Josie. She’s looking for a place where she can get away from her overbearing parents and two older annoying brothers. Unfortunately Ella realizes that sometimes the past comes back to haunt you.

Ella soon learns that the man who terrorizes her dreams is in fact real and coming after her.

When one of her classmates is murdered, Ella slowly recognizes this is not some strange coincidence. Ella fears that the boy she’s falling in love with is the one who stalks her dreams and no longer knows who she can trust.

When she finally learns the truth of her family's deepest secret, Ella has to face her demons by taking out one of the people she thought she could trust…before they kill her

Review:

This book ended up surprising me in a good way; I actually enjoyed this book more than I expected. I'm not a particularly avid YA paranormal reader, so I found this book to be a pleasant surprise.

I think the reason why I liked this book a lot was because Ella, the main character, really grew on me throughout the pages. She comes from a wealthy family (a nice break from the usual comes-from-a-poor-family-slash-abandoned-at-birth character background found in a lot of the books I've been reading recently) with loving parents and gets perfect grades. Yet...she's not what she seems. Ella wants to develop her own sense of independence, she wants to be in control of her life, and starting college seems like the perfect time to do so. Watching Ella change as a character--and yes, she does make a few stupid mistakes during her early weeks at college--was interesting and had me turning the pages.

Enter Tristen and Jack, two other major characters. Tristen basically seems like a jerk and honestly I felt like hating him. Jack, on the other hand, seems like a nice kid; the type of boy who gets overlooked all the time but is a nice person once you get to know. So boy was I unprepared for the plot twist Miller had in store for these two characters. (I'm not going to spoil it but let's just say it involves a game of cat and mouse in which the cat might sometimes where the mask of a mouse....oh wow, that was a really bad metaphor, wasn't it?)

It was interesting how the author doesn't introduces the paranormal aspect of the novel until much, much later into the book (like on page 250 in a 340 page-ish novel.) But I kind of liked it like that since nothing felt rushed or force and it allows for character development and plot thickening.

My only quip with The Wanderers is the Tristen-Ella relationship. I felt like they were on and off and on and off again, so some parts were predictable. Nevertheless, the book is fast paced and well written.

Rating: