Paranormal

Jules whole life is pretty much consumed by her family's Italian Restaurant which they live above. Her dad has mental issues and severe depression, so the family has to pull together that much more to make it work. She's always working and driving around the super-embarrassing meatball truck. Then she starts having visions of a crash. In the vision an out-of-control snow plow crashes into a building and the building explodes. Nine body bags are then seen in the snow beside the burned out building. This crash is very realistic and she figures out the building getting crashed into is the Agnotti's, the restaurant-rival of her family. She tries to ignore/block it out, convinced she's just crazy, but the vision refuses to be ignored.

Eventually she comes to the realization that she's not crazy and that this is going to happen. The body bags she sees in the snow after the crash.... well one of them belongs to Sawyer Agnotti, her super-crush. She knows she has to try to save him and his family, but how in the world do you tell people about a crash that hasn't happened yet without them thinking you are completely nuts?

My Thoughts:
I got really into this book. It was super addicting!! The more the crash would show up on random signs and TV screens, the more anxious I got wondering when the heck this was going to happen! I love that feeling like you HAVE to know what's going to happen. You can't go to bed because you don't know if the characters are going to be okay. This book definitely is an up all night kind of read.

I read the first Wake book, and while this definitely had some of the same elements to it as that, it was completely better!! The side characters in this book were so cool. I really dug the siblings and their relationships with each other. Being an only-child it made me a little jealous even. Rowan, Trey, and Jules were like this awesome team who looked out for each other, joked around together, and just had this protecting love between them. I was really glad that Jules had this and wasn't all alone like Janie was in Wake.

The book is short and written sort of choppy. But if you read my stuff I write that way too, so it didn't bother me in the least. I like how this author doesn't dick around explaining and explaining things... but it can be a good and a bad thing. The good- she gets to the point... and sometimes it's just nice to read a shorter book. The bad- some of the characters suffer a little from it.

The love story part was a little ehhh for me. I wasn't expecting it to come together so fast at the end and I really didn't love that part of it. I was into the Romeo and Juliet vibe, but all the family-drama and Jules just being so forward at one point was throwing me off a little. Also I think I just wanted more personality from Sawyer to know what was so love-able about him... besides the sharing of plastic animals. Plus Jules gets really creepy at times during this book (for good reason, but still) and I wanted Sawyer to react like a normal person and tell her she was a freaking weirdo!!

Jules was a really funny character (even if she was a little stalkerish). I loved the "oh my dogs" stuff and the way her and her brother Trey would talk to each other. They always had super funny convos that just completely made the book for me.

The ending was definitely surprising! I'm trying not going to get all spoilery here, but I was expecting another vision, just not who it came from at all!!! I'm definitely up for reading the 2nd book like immediately.... when does it come out?????

Overall: Very addicting, suspenseful book. A must-read for Lisa McMann fans and anyone just looking for something that will keep you up all night reading!! Also the cover is GORGEOUS in person!

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2.5 Stars ( )

I really liked this one- it got a little repetitive and slow in the middle, but overall, it was good. Loved the ending. ( )

I've read other Lisa McMann books and I was a little disappointed with this compared to her others. It doesn't help that I didn't think the narrator was that good. She was a little too dramatic and her voices for the boys weren't great. The story was fairly straightforward with few surprises. Jules begins seeing visions of an accident that kills nine people, including her long time crush and family rival Sawyer. She struggles with what to do and tries to tell Sawyer, which doesn't go over well. Jules was a little too much for me. She kept acting like her life was ending because she was crazy and began to do weird things like abandoning her pizza deliveries and skipping school. I would be weirded out if I got visions, but Jules does not handle it well. The ending tried to be a bit of a cliffhanger to make you want to read more, but I think I'll skip it. ( )