The Graces by Laure Eve

# of pages: 336

Time it took me to finish: 4 days

# of pages a day to finish in a week: 48

Rating: 2 out of 5

River is a nobody: a blank slate in a new town. But the Graces are the most powerful family around, and anyone who meets them is immediately under their spell. No one else feels their influence as intensely as River, and she knows from the moment that she lays eyes on them that she will do anything to be loved by them, each and every one. Because River has a secret, and she knows if anyone can help her face the darkness of her past, it’s the Graces.

So, first of all, I just finished this book, like not ten minutes ago, and I decided that I needed to write this review right now, because this book fills me with rage.

So the book starts with our protagonist River. She seems to me, immediately, like one of the flattest characters I’ve ever read. Like she’s just this ordinary girl with this “dark past” that she won’t go into, and she is obsessed with this family, the Graces, in her new town. They are beautiful, rich, and powerful in a seemingly unearthly way, and of course she is undyingly in love with the boy one. River, she wants to be one of them. Every second of each interaction with them is her carefully posturing her way in, because the Graces didn’t have best friends, didn’t have confidents. But she would become one.

You know what this sounds like to me? This book, for the first 250 pages of it, reeked of Twilight. The Graces? Basically like the Cullens. But instead of vampires? Everyone in the town thought that they were witches. But to me, River seemed even more pathetic then Bella, predictable and unrelatable. River, like Bella, was irresistibly attracted to the Graces even though they were bad for her. The first huge chunk of this book was a total snooze-fest, one that I was determined to get through, if only so I could give it a scathing review on my blog.

But boy, oh, boy, was I tricked. The last hundred pages of the book went in a direction that I could not have possibly predicted. I won’t spoil it for you, just in case you decide to pick it up, but let me just say that I was insanely surprised at the end. I still don’t like River, never liked River, but I think that I understand now that I’m not supposed to. I still think that River is a character that is not written entirely well, I think that she makes decisions that seem very random and out of character throughout the book, and that her inner monologue is erratic, and not necessarily in the way that the author intended.

I do have to give Laure Eve some credit, though. She certainly did not go with the easy ending. And the twist at the end was a damn good one. Another thing that I have to give Eve some credit for is style: she goes into insane detail with the, well, details. All of her characters’ physical traits, and the settings, are meticulously described, and it’s clear that Eve has a very clear picture in her head of what everything looked like.

I didn’t like this book overall, as is clear by the rating. And I don’t think I can really bring myself to recommend it to anyone, either. But will I be reading the sequel that’s going to drop in January? Yeah, probably. But I won’t be happy about it. I’m still incredibly mad that the last hundred pages hooked me. It feels like cheating, you know? Like I didn’t enjoy most of the book, but the twist and the cliffhanger force me to need to know what happens. But any parts of my little rant sound like they might appeal to you, go ahead and give this book a shot. And if anyone does, please hit me up with what you think about it? I’m dying to hear the opinion of someone else.