3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Some part of Thane urges him to be invisible, to not stand out. He was doing a good job blending in, too, until the outgoing transfer student Remi showed up. Remi picks him to be her newest friend, effectively drawing Thane out into the spotlight. Then, his chemistry teacher tries to burn and electrocute him in front of the entire class and a man from a secret organization appears to help sort things out.
In Angela Day’s The Darkest Lie, Thane finds out that his entire life has been one big lie. At the secret organization he’s been invited to, Sanctum, he tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered knowledge to understand just who — and what — he is. Unfortunately, all the arrows point to him being a monster. It's up to Thane to learn to control himself and the power inside of him, but he only has one week of training and many other problems garnering for his attention.
I truly enjoyed Angela Day’s storytelling. She started off slow, giving the readers a lot of background and letting us get to know the main characters before things started getting crazy. I had plenty of time to fall in love with Thane and Remi before more characters were introduced. Unfortunately, once things started getting busy within the novel, the storytelling got out of hand. A handful of characters were introduced all at once, making it hard to sort out who was who. Action sequences happened right after characters were introduced, so they were hard to follow. Thane spent a lot of his time at Sanctum getting knocked unconscious, then waking up to a fight or some ridiculous set-up before getting knocked unconscious again. There were a few scenes where I wanted to roll my eyes and skip ahead because there was just no plot value to them.
Although the story got out-of-hand halfway through the novel and ended with almost no warning, I enjoyed the character development and the way that the readers learned as Thane learned. I felt that this is a great YA novel that could turn into an even better series with the help of an editor who could tone down some of the scenes in the middle and give the readers a breather while both they and Thane adapt to the new environment.
Overall, I would give The Darkest Lie 3 out of 4 stars. I became attached to the characters and would love to know what happens next in the story, but I didn’t appreciate some of the overly-long and unnecessary scenes in the first book. Also, there were a few typos and missing/additional words throughout the book, but I thought the editing was quite well-done for a self-published book. I would definitely recommend this book to young adults, especially those who enjoyed the Percy Jackson series. This book is part of a series and several questions have been left unanswered by the end of the first book, so I would not recommend it to people who want a quick, uncomplicated read.
******
The Darkest Lie
View: on Bookshelves
Like katiesquilts's review? Post a comment saying so!
).
The plot is actually quite convoluted, with lots of different things going on at once!
