{Review} Reawakened (The Reawakened #1) by Colleen Houck

Posted by Melanie
Release Date: August 13th, 2015
Finished Date: October 11th, 2015

Publishers: Hodder
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Source: For Review
Format: ARC

Pages: 400
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US / Book Depo 

 

From COLLEEN HOUCK, New York Times bestselling author of the Tiger's Curse series, comes the first book in a series about a teenage girl entangled in an epic Egyptian quest full of romance, adventure, and mythology!

When seventeen-year-old Lilliana Young enters the Metropolitan Museum of Art one morning during spring break, the last thing she expects to find is a live Egyptian prince with godlike powers, who has been reawakened after a thousand years of mummification.

And she really can't imagine being chosen to aid him in an epic quest that will lead them across the globe.

But fate has taken hold of Lily, and she, along with her sun prince, Amon, must travel to the Valley of the Kings, raise his brothers, and stop an evil, shape-shifting god named Seth from taking over the world.

From New York Times bestselling author Colleen Houck comes an epic adventure about two star-crossed teens who must battle mythical forces and ancient curses on a journey with more twists and turns than the Nile itself. 

The Review: Reawakened is the first book in the series of the same name. We have a 17yr old heroine in Liliana Young, a girl from a privileged home that feels trapped by expectations of how her life must pan out. Her passion is art and she often finds herself in museums but on this particular trip to the Met she finds more than she bargains for. Amon has reawakened as he has done every thousand years since the task befell him and his brothers but this time he faces a dire situation – he isn’t in his usual country and something major is missing from his sarcophagus that he needs to survive – with no other options and a quest to fulfil, he binds himself to Lily so that he can complete his mission to save the earth. They both head off on a world wide quest, learning about modern times and old, sharing experiences and maybe falling a little in love…. But what happens to Amon when it’s over – win or lose?
This is my first foray into the work of Colleen Houck and it was sort of a mixed bag for me. I liked the characters of Lily and Amon, they were both very different obviously with one being ancient but I liked how they came together. Lily showed Amon what it was like to live in the modern world whilst Amon shared with her some old world wisdom and customs. I thought Amon assimilated to modern times really well considering how technology has moved on since the last time he was awoken, he willing to learn, willing to give everything a go and more than willing to have Lily guide him. Lily was quite sweet and I had sympathy for some of her home life but saying that, she had opportunity to rebel had she wanted to and that made her seem like a person who was a people pleaser so it was good to see her get some sass and realise how much bigger the world could be if she took a chance. When a romance did blossom through them, it was sweet and even though I wouldn’t class Lily as anything other than demure, she came across as the more dominant because of Amon’s background and morals on what should happen between a couple which brought a nice bit of tension to the story and gave a will they won’t they feel but in a totally PG way.
The story is split up into three parts with part one being nearly half of the book and the part I had the most struggle to stay interested in. In this part there was lot of getting to know you and your world stuff which is ok but when you have Amon needing to be brought up to date and Lily being told about his time etc……it bored me. I know why it was there, I appreciate it was needed for the story but it bogged the story down when all I wanted to do was get to some action and adventure. That definitely changed in the latter 2 parts when things got a whole lot ‘Indiana Jones’ where quests amongst the pyramids were the order of the day, the pacing really picked up and I loved it! I really like all of the Egyptology that was intertwined with the story, yeah I get that some of it isn’t factual but it was woven with the real stuff really well and who doesn’t love knowing more about that civilisation? There were some great chapters with descriptions of them in the tombs, secrets passageways and traps that were laid in them and that definitely gave the adventure/quest impression a boost. I loved how Amon – along with Lily – had to go and find his brothers resting places in order to summon them and like him, they too had been moved; so again with the quest feel.
The enemy and danger fit in really well with the story and used a real god from Egyptian times as the ultimate enemy but it wasn’t all him – he had ground forces too, people who were determined that the brothers would not finish their ritual and this brought plenty of danger, action and excitement to the plot causing all of our characters to have to run for their lives on numerous occasions. So what started as a borefest turned into an all action adventure that I couldn’t stop reading and because of that super slow start, what would have been a 4* book is now a 3* - but….saying that, the latter half of the book was redemption enough that I have been left with enough interest in it to read the sequel. 

Thank you to Hodder for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.