Elemental: The First (Primord #1)
by Alexandra May
Summary: Just who is Halíka Dacomé?
To Rose Frost, moving house every six months is normal. Another new town here, another new school there, her ability to adapt is as easy as breathing. But everything changes when her parents go overseas and Rose moves in with her grandmother. She enjoys meeting new friends and catching up with old ones from her childhood holidays — except now she must hide a precious secret from everyone, a gift from birth that defies modern day science.
Her dreams become riddled with a warrior woman called Halíka Dacomé, but are they visions or messages from the future? She starts her own investigation but encounters more questions than answers. Living right on the edge of Warminster in Wiltshire doesn’t help with its folklore and myths about strange lights in the sky and ghost stories of the Salisbury Plain
Not only that, her troubles really take hold one night when the mysterious Aiden Deverill with his alluring smile, his gorgeous dark looks and hypnotising blue eyes, saves her from a freak fire. Or did he?
For Rose, her new life is beginning but she soon realises that despite assurances people are not always what they seem. What she always believed to be a happy family and a friendly town soon turns on its head when she discovers that her family secret, Aiden Deverill and the truth behind Halíka Dacomé is at the heart of the whole conspiracy.
Source: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Review:
This book was kind of confusing to read and even harder to review. I liked so many elements of the book, such as the characters, the setting, the supernatural conflict, the love triangle, the romance, the secrets, etc. Basically, I loved the story. I even liked the writing and found the book to be free of errors, so that isn’t why I rated it low. I didn't like the way the story was told as a whole. I liked all the scenes, but I felt like this book was a disjointed puzzle. Each piece of the puzzle was awesome, but it doesn’t fit together quite right.
Elemental: The First seemed jumbled to me. Even though the timeline flowed in the right direction, something about the book didn’t come together the right way. It is as if there isn’t a good focus on the overall plot. Each scene and section was great, but the focus of one scene would be Rose trying to fit into her new home and making friends and having fun and it would be a great scene. And next, we’d have Rose wake up, disturbed by a terrifying dream involving the pieces of the supernatural puzzle and that would be a great scene. But together, it just felt off, like the supernatural stuff was out of sight out of mind unless Rose was directly confronted with it. It just wasn’t right, however difficult it is for me to explain. Even though the book wasn’t complex, it was kind of hard to follow.
I felt like the book could have been compressed into just a few chapters or been a short novella. The conflict at the end was something the reader knew from the very beginning, it just took the entire book for Rose to figure it out and I was hoping she’d figure out the conflict early on and then the events would be more serious and the stakes would be higher and there would be some more twists. I kind of feel cheated. It wasn’t like Rose was a complete idiot as far as being ignorant about the supernatural stuff surrounding her life, but it took her a very long time to fit the pieces of the puzzle together and I would have rather not known from the beginning what the conflict would be or I would have wanted her to be a bit quicker and sharper. I think I was given too much information and it made the book a lot less mysterious and interesting.
Overall, it was a really interesting story with wonderful characters and an intriguing and unique supernatural plot, but the execution was off. I might recommend this book to others because there were some wonderful qualities about it. I don’t know if I’ll continue the series. I really want to find out what happens next and I grew to care about the characters a lot, but I also feel sort of disappointed.
Elemental: The First is only $1.50 for Kindle right now:
Labels: Review, YA
