Review: The Fallen Star
Series: The Fallen Star – Book 1Author: Jessica Sorensen
No of Pages: 447
Release Date: 9 April 2011
My Thoughts:
The Fallen Star didn’t live up to my expectations at all; it was an extremely frustrating read.
From since before she can remember, Gemma hasn’t been able to feel emotion of any sort, she has gone through life with no friends and no family she can talk to. Until one seemingly unimportant day, when she feels her first emotion ever, and things spiral downward from there.
Gemma was an extremely stupid, naive, boring character, she encompasses everything that is – stupid teenage girl. From day one she made inappropriate decisions that simply cannot be passed off as adolescent immaturity.
My biggest pet peeve with her was her constant running to Alex and her non-committal statement confirming that she shouldn’t be doing it but she just wants to have a bit of fun after so many years of not feeling blah blah snore. Alex lied to her, kept things from her, deliberately distracts her and is obviously using her for not only selfish but dangerous purposes.
Gemma never followed anything up, Alex would let something important slip about her past and Gemma would constantly make a point of saying “you are not going to get out of telling me this”, but does she ever follow through? Of course not, which gives Alex the go ahead to continuously lead her on without telling her anything and lying to her the whole way.
Even after confirmation that she was being lied to and a perfectly good reason not to go with Alex, she still chased after him.
Gemma was a weak character and extremely dull. Sorensen tried to make her witty by talking to the reader even going as far to say “oh, don’t look at me like that” but it just didn’t work. Gemma was not only boring, but extremely dumb. After seeming to develop visions of the past and possibly the future, Gemma is given all of the pieces of the puzzle about halfway through the novel to piece everything together, even after the reader was told what was going on at the end of the story, Gemma whose POV we are in, still didn’t seem to know what was going on.
I’m not quite sure what Sorensen was trying to achieve with the character of Alex, but whatever it was, she didn’t pull it off at all. Alex was a complete tool. He was not a handsome broody guy, he was a complete wanker, there is absolutely nothing to like about him, he is a brainwashed, pathological liar. He tries to hide behind the “I’m just a moody guy” excuse but no, he is just a malevolent character. At one point I actually swore out loud at the book because he promised Gemma that he “would tell her everything” my kneejerk reaction to that was bulls***!
I also found it hard to get through The Fallen Star because of the horrible editing. Usually a few mistakes here and there don’t bother me, but whened a sentencing is contantly reads like this and these author seems to haves no concepts of the correct uses of the word “there” it becoming very frustrate.
It read like a first draft basically, errors were everywhere and the book probably could have been at least fifty pages shorter if you simply took out the amount of times certain facts were repeated, sometimes the same line used consecutively over the course of three chapters.
The Fallen Star was a big disappointment for me, the characters had no life and were complete contradictions of themselves, the story line relied too heavily on the characters so it never seemed to move and the book was so badly edited that I was tempted to line edit it myself.
