A Review for PineLight by Jillian Peery

Posted by Donna 
Published Date: July 14, 2011
Finished Date: October 21st, 2011
Source: For Review 
Format: Paperback 
Pages: 250 
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The Blurb from Goodreads: "I loved him - that was my torment. And I was losing him all over again." Walls crumbled all around me. An undeniable force pulled at my core. I tried to fight it, I tried to deny it the power, but I was weak. I felt pain in my side, and I knew that this dark force was winning. My veins started to burn, and I screamed, but it didn't stop.

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The Review: I’ll be honest; I’ve been struggling to write this review for a few weeks no. I struggled with this book and although I can see how much hard work and love has gone into the story, it pains me to say that…..it just wasn’t for me.

PineLight start with Clara, a young girl who lives with her aunt after losing her parents. Clara doesn’t remember anything about her past but she knows that the people around her, who loves her, are protecting her from something. Her best friend Erik has hurt her by stealing pages of her journal but when Clara’s aunt is kidnapped, she is thrown into a dangerous world where she must go on the run and try and find out her destiny.

If you’ve read the blurb you will know how intriguing this book sounds and although this is what attracted me to the book in first place, after reading it….I just don’t get it. I did find the first few chapters very intriguing but I quickly got confused. I was confused because there’s a lot of weird things happening to our main character from page one. And because I never actually knew what’s going on, I constantly felt like I was missing something. I had to back track and re-read pages just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I didn’t understand the Biblical references and how it combines with the mythology and I also felt there was too much jumping about in the story. There were so many different characters from vampires, to pirates to little girls and even mysterious boys….it was just too much and everything happened far too quickly for my liking.

The characters I felt we’re lacking. With Clara being our main character I felt she wasn’t developed that well, she’s quite naïve and never really questions what’s going on around her. Although I tried to like her and I did feel for her for the situation she was in, I couldn’t connect to her and that’s what I need from a main character.

Now I know this is only book one in the PineLight series and yes, I do believe the series will get better as it goes on but I need something to capture my interest, I almost felt I was reading a mystery book and mystery isn’t really my thing. But, even now when I look at all the other reviews on Goodreads….other people liked it, so that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t if you tried it. I do believe that many of you will like this story, so try it and make up your own minds.