Goodreads Synopsis: Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet, she's never alone...because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.
But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.
Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away...especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.
But if she let. s herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.
My Confession: Once again, if Meg Cabot writes it, I'll pick it up. Especially her YA novels (which I really think are where she shines). I love the concept of this trilogy--modernizing the Greek tale of Persephone and Hades, lord of the Underworld. As the myth goes, Hades fell in love with Persephone, and after tricking her into eating six pomegranate seeds, forced her to live with him in his Underworld kingdom six months out of the year. (This was how the Greeks explained the change in seasons.) I find Greek mythology utterly fascinating, so any take on a tale like this is worth investigating. In Cabot's version, seventeen-year-old Pierce has a NDE (near-death experience) after falling into her backyard pool. While the medics desperately try to restart her heart, she's taken to the underground kingdom of the mysterious John Hayden, who tries to keep her there. However, she escapes, the medics having successfully revived her. Pierce spends the rest of the book both simultaneously avoiding and goading John, not really deciding whether she loves or hates her once-captor.
Pierce's Pomegranate: The thing is, Pierce isn't as strong a character as I would have wanted. She seems utterly wishy-washy when it comes to her relationship with John, and I kept getting the feeling that there was something more there that we weren't being told as readers. By all means, she should fear and loathe the guy; he seems to stalk her, and he once held her captive. But instead, she's drawn to him, and we're not really sure why. At school, she doesn't seem interested in making friends, but quickly falls in step with a group of popular kids who are so transparent and superficial, it's hard to like Pierce for keeping their company. A lot of questions are raised about Pierce's past, which we know is shady, but the answers are drawn out for far too long, and they're not quite as satisfying as you would expect. As a writer, I totally understand the art of keeping the reader hanging on a certain plot point, but there were too many balls in the air at one time, and I just got a little lost. A new villain is introduced at the end, and it seems to come out of left field--how long was this person a villain? There was just a lot going on here, and even though the pace was good and kept me turning each page, occasionally the information withheld ended up dragging the story down.
Recommendation: I'm happy that this is just the first book in a trilogy. Because I think the next book has the potential to be much better. Judging from how this one left off, there will be more action and more peril in the sequel. Not unlike some of Cabot's past series, this first book gets weighed down under a lot of plot and backstory set-up. I didn't feel like a lot actually happened. It feels like a really long prologue to a story that just began during the last chapter. Yes, John's kind of sexy and mysterious. Yes, he and Pierce are probably "made for each other." But I want to see more than some kind of star-crossed romance. I want action, I want danger, I want to see some obstacles. I want Cabot to get right to the meat of this story in her next book.
Rating: 3/5
304 pages, published by Point (April 26, 2011)
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