NICOLE'S REVIEW: Blackbird by Anna Carey

Title: Blackbird

Author: Anna Carey

Format Acquired: eARC

Publication Date: September 16 2014

Publishing House: HarperTeen

ISBN: 0062299735

Source of Copy:  Edelweiss

Summary: 

A girl wakes up on train tracks, a subway car barreling down on her. With only minutes to react, she hunches down and the train speeds over her. She doesn't remember her name, where she is, or how she got there. She has a tattoo on the inside of her right wrist of a blackbird inside a box, letters and numbers printed just below: FNV02198. There is only one thing she knows for sure: people are trying to kill her.

On the run for her life, she tries to untangle who she is and what happened to the girl she used to be. Nothing and no one are what they appear to be. But the truth is more disturbing than she ever imagined.

        (Image and information courtesy of Goodreads; Summary lifted from actual book)

Review: 

A girl wakes up with no memory, watching a train hurdle towards her. She's got a tattoo on her wrist, money in her bag and instructions to call an unknown number while dodging the police. All she knows is that she's being hunted and she'll have to find a way to clear the blocks in her memory if she wants to survive.

This book had such an interesting premise so I thought I'd give it a try. Mind you, I wasn't a fan of Carey's previous series but I thought I'd give her another chance. Well, it obviously wasn't for me seeing as I'm giving this book a really low rating.

First of, I wasn't a fan of the second person point of view. And yes, I did check out Carey's reasons for writing in this POV but I'm sorry because it didn't work for me. It felt stilted and unreal. The atmosphere felt flat for me and the action? I was't amused. A lot of scenes seemed way too fortuitous for the protagonist. And the story basically felt way too unreal. How lucky is she that she has built in survival skills. Pick a lock? No problem! Run from the cops? Easy.

The other annoying thing in this book was the romance. What are the chances that the girl bumps into this dude in a grocery and he ends up being her love interest and the dude who shows interest in her because she's different and not like all the rest? I don't get why he wasn't the least bit cautious. I mean yeah, you bump into a girl who's got a nasty cut on her arm and it's natural to worry about her but to the point of actually slipping her your number "in case of emergency"? For all that idiot knew she could have been a serial killer. An escaped convict and a myriad of other nasty things.

All throughout the story there are snippets of memories and I wasn't surprised when it involved a guy too. I bet there's a love triangle in the works. Which is very, very irritating because she's got no memory, she's being hunted and all she can think about is kissing a boy? How about saving herself first, huh? I mean it's gonna be hard to kiss a guy when she's dead. 

Frankly, I'm not sure how I managed to finish this book but I did and I'm patting myself on the back right now because of  the effort. Just so you guys know, I was as confused as the protag for most of the story and until the end I couldn't even begin to picture her in my head - her personality, her character, nothing. So, even if the story might have picked up towards the latter portion of the book, it wasn't enough to redeem the overall. The ending had me wanting to slap someone.

Rating: