BOOK REVIEW: Born At Midnight by CC Hunter

Born at Midnight is the first in the Shadow Falls written by CC Hunter. It was published on 29^th March 2011 by St Martin’s Griffin, its ISBN is 0312624670. 

PLOT

One night Kylie Galen finds herself at the wrong party, with the wrong people, and it changes her life forever. Her mother ships her off to Shadow Falls—a camp for troubled teens, and within hours of arriving, it becomes painfully clear that her fellow campers aren’t just “troubled.” Here at Shadow Falls, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, witches and fairies train side by side—learning to harness their powers, control their magic and live in the normal world.

Kylie’s never felt normal, but surely she doesn’t belong here with a bunch of paranormal freaks either. Or does she? They insist Kylie is one of them, and that she was brought here for a reason. As if life wasn’t complicated enough, enter Derek and Lucas. Derek’s a half-fae who’s determined to be her boyfriend, and Lucas is a smokin’ hot werewolf with whom Kylie shares a secret past. Both Derek and Lucas couldn’t be more different, but they both have a powerful hold on her heart.

Even though Kylie feels deeply uncertain about everything, one thing is becoming painfully clear—Shadow Falls is exactly where she belongs…

WHY I BOUGHT IT

It has been awhile since I have gotten my teeth into a really good YA series from the start, I have several ongoing series that I love (yay for more Bloodlines next month) but have been looking around for other series to add to the reading pile. Unravelling was a hot mess, Mythos Academy was uninspiring and after that I moved onto other genres in the pile, Born at Midnight is me taking a chance on a plot outline that sounds intriguing with the knowledge that there are already several more books if I want more.

WHAT I THOUGHT

Kylie Galen has done it, she stands at the top of the pedestal alone, she is my number one most unlikable main character far surpassing my intense dislike for one Rose Hathaway of the Vampire Academy series. She is just one of the most selfish and vile characters I have ever had the misfortune of following in a book. You know the most unfortunate thing about is that Kylie is only one of several things that make Born at Midnight extremely hard to read.

TOO MANY PLOTS

Teen pregnancy, unknown birth right, love triangles, divorce and family secrets and there are even more plotlines to be found in this first book. The result is that far too much is going on and the book suffers from having to jump between all these plots.

CHARACTERISATION

There is very little in the way of characterisation everyone just gets the go to adjectives, sexy, angry, scary and the like. The boys are attractive with broad shoulders and flat stomachs or they are creepy. Kylie’s cabin mates get fleshed out a little more but that seemed to be more as a result of the plot having to move forward than anything else. The love interests were nothing more than pretty cardboard by the end of the book which may or may not be worse than other multi-book stories but they didn’t feel very real or interesting.

This goes doubly for Kylie she starts the book proper denying that she is supernatural, and this manages to go on for 90% of the book though thankfully she is less of a cow about it as we move through the story and stops treating them like freaks even as they go well out of their way to be nice to her.

Born at Midnight is an amazing premise that falls badly in the execution, to put it simply there is much too much going on. I cannot recommend this book to fans of paranormal YA it feels like an unfinished exercise in writing. After I completed this book and was preparing this review I read that the author was switching over from romance so perhaps this could be put down to initial teething problems and we might see an improvement to later instalments. Still even allowing for that I think there are many YA books out there that are worthy of your potential time.