Here's a quick rundown for you since I won't be posting a full review. There was little to no character development and I just didn't like Mia. The writing style felt rushed and so did the ending. I enjoyed the premise, but honestly felt cheated out of the ride to the conclusion. ( )

Diese und weitere Rezensionen findet ihr auf meinem Blog Anima Libri - Buchseele

Dieses Buch bekommt so ungefähr 2,5 Sterne, denke ich. Ich weiß es nicht genau, weil mich die Lektüre dieses Buches doch sehr zwiegespalten zurück gelassen hat.

Das eine Element, dass dieses Buch so besonders macht, war gleichzeitig auch das Element, was mich am meisten gestört hat: Mias Fähigkeit Blitze anzuziehen. Einerseits ist dieses Konzept wirklich faszinierend und genau das, was dieses Buch von so vielen anderen Jugendbüchern im Dystopie-Bereich abhebt, andererseits wurde die Idee für meinen Geschmack einfach nicht genug ausgearbeitet und blieb wahnsinnig oberflächlich.

Dazu kam der starke religiöse Kontext. Einerseits war der ausgesprochen gut ausgearbeitet, denn hier zeigt sich sehr gut, wie aus einer ehemals anscheinend klaren Trennung zwischen schwarz und weiß plötzlich ein allgemeines dunkelgraues Mischmasch werden kann. Andererseits finde ich starke religiöse Aspekte einfach nervig, eine meiner persönlichen Abneigungen, was Thematiken in phantastischen Jugendbüchern angeht.

Außerdem waren viele der Charaktere einfach dumm. 90% der Handlung bauen auf offensichtlich idiotischen Entscheidungen der Protagonistin und anderer Charaktere auf und die Dialoge… Naja, die entbehrten so ziemlich jedes Sinns und waren herrlich unerfrischend und einfallslos. Bis auf einige wenige Highlights war das Buch in dieser Hinsicht ziemlich mau.

Und auch sonst war das Buch an vielen Stellen eher mau als sonst irgendwas und für meinen Geschmack einfach zu unausgereift, trotz der teilweise wirklich guten Ideen. ( )

According to the National Weather Service, the odds that you'll be struck by lightning (at all) even once in your life is about 1 in 10,000. Mia Price probably skews those odds, though. She's been stuck by lightning more times than she can count.

The beautiful, burning pain of each strike has left her addicted, drawn to lightning and the next time it decides to shoot down from the sky and hit her.

After an incident that forced Mia and her family to leave their hometown in Arizona, however, they've moved to Los Angeles - the city where it supposedly never rains. Several weeks ago there was a giant earthquake, part of a series of natural and other disasters across the world, that all but leveled the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding area. In this post-apocalyptic time, Mia is struggling to maintain order in her life and that of her younger brother, Parker - all while helping her mother through her shock and depression.

As school starts back, Mia is forced to leave her mother home all day - watching Prophet's The Hour of Light Prophet, a self proclaimed prophet of God (who hears the voice of God) predicted the quake and has gained more and more Followers since.

Between Mia's ability to absorb lightning strikes and not die, Prophet and whatever he and his Followers have planned - or claim to know about, as well as the new people she encounters at school, Mia has her work cut out for her just surviving. And, perhaps, making sure everyone else does, too.


Whether it was because I didn't read the synopsis fully or something else, Struck was not at all what I expected (and by now I've completely forgotten what ever it was I did expect). I love that it has so many elements - Mia and the lightning, it's post-apocalyptic, the fanatical Prophet and his Followers evangelizing all over town, the religious end of the world element (through Prophet), some good vs evil, and of let's not forget, some romance - yet they all work together.

Mia and Jeremy are definitely the strongest characters in Struck. The other - Parker, Katrina, Mia's mother, etc - aren't quite as strong and in a few scenes I did wish for a little more from them, but I love that we're given so much description for them. It's easy to picture the characters of Struck, Jennifer Bosworth does an excellent job describing not not only their physical attributes but also the feelings they give off to other characters - it makes them easy to picture right away.

The relationship between Mia and Jeremy will leave you not only pulling for them, but also hoping everyone makes it out of it in one piece.

The description of Los Angeles is also nice. We don't get all of it right away. As things are told by Mia, readers learn about different things and places as she either goes to those places or hears about them. It's still a fantastic job of building the world of Los Angeles after it's been quite nearly destroyed by a giant earthquake.

Plot twists in Struck never failed to grab me - especially towards the end. Things really came together beautifully then (including just what Mia's lightning attraction really was and what it meant as I was somehow not quite grasping all of it earlier).

I'm gonna buy this on Wednesday! I didn't have enough money when I saw this at the bookstore earlier.
AND IT WAS SIGNED!

Struck RATING: 3 stars
 
WARNING: Contains minor SPOILERS
 

"My name is Mia Price and, I'm a lightning addict."
 

Promising start, I'll give you that. But also an immense potential for the idea to turn sour. I mean logically many people hit by lightning simply die, but Mia seems to bear it extremely well (except for burnt clothes and hair). Why? What is special about her? And did she ever wonder?The book opens with Mia and her family recovering from the effects of an earthquake that hit Los Angeles, a month before. The setting for this novel is, thus, post-apocalyptic. Los Angeles was nearly completely destroyed, millions of people died or are missing and millions more lost their houses. Electricity and water come and go, food is scarce. Mia and her brother have to care for their mother, who was buried beneath a building for days and now has Acute Stress Syndrome. They also need to go to school if they want to get food.In this bleak environment, the Church of the Light, a cult, gains followers. They are everywhere with their white clothes, trying to recruit more followers, warning people that the end of the world is near. Their Prophet has predicted the earthquake and predicts that something worse is coming.This is the setting of the book and I simply loved it. I thought Bosworth did a great job with her world-building. In such times many people turn to religion and to something that gives them hope so the rising in popularity of the Church of the Light was to be expected. The water, electricity and food shortage, the militias, the looting; I thought the world-building was good and very interesting. It had a movie quality to it (it may not have been the most realistic, but it worked).Mia seemed like a sensible girl (except for the fact that she likes to get hit by lightning), but I was very confused at the beginning... I mean, didn't she wonder why she was able to survive so many lightning strikes?Still, I was loving this book, the whole world-building, the slow uncovering of Mia's past, how she and her brother dealt with their mentally unstable mother.Then Jeremy came along. Yes, you're guessing right. He's the hot, mysterious guy who warns Mia away from some people who might be another cult, the Seekers. She feels attracted to him, he is mysterious and tortured and voilá: we have the insta-love.A few eye-rolls later I was ready to continue. I guessed I just had to roll my eyes at the mushy insta-love scenes and carry on. But things got worse because... Mia found out a few things about herself and her lightning addiction. Suddenly everyone was out to get her, and for some reason the story became immensely predictable; I figured out who Jeremy really was pretty quickly. At the same time we get to know very little about the Seekers and their objectives. I still don't get them and I finished the book. How were they planning to save the world? Why did they want Mia to die?Mia changed personality and seemed to have lost a few brain cells along the way. She was slow on the uptake and got herself into stupid situations.So, after our male protagonist was introduced, Mia's development as a character stopped and she turned into a classic YA heroine (tm). Jeremy was simply brooding and tortured, not much development there either. Mia's mother and brother were much more fleshed out and interesting characters, for example.Overall I loved the concept and world-building. But then the author had to go and add all the most annoying clichés in YA literature which ruined about half the book for me. I felt there was too much pointless running around and not enough information about Mia's powers and their origin. Could have been so much better; it definitely had the potential. ( )