Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Review: Insanity by Susan Vaught

Insanity by Susan Vaught
Published by Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Genre: YA Paranormal
Format: ebook from Netgalley
$17.99 (US Hardback)
384 pages
 
 
What it's about:

Never, Kentucky is not your average scenic small town. It is a crossways, a place where the dead and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing....When the dead husband of one of Forest's patients makes an appearance late one night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play, and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected.

With her deep knowledge of mental illness and mental institutions, Susan Vaught brings readers a fascinating and completely creepy new book intertwining the stories of three young people who find themselves haunted beyond imagining in the depths of Lincoln Hospital.

My thoughts:
I feel like I am having the worst luck with YA books lately. I can't seem to find one that keeps my attention all the way through the book.

When I read the synopsis for this book, I knew that something was off. It only talks about Forest and at the end says that four teens stories come together. So lets clear this up right now, Forest is not the MC; she is one of four. One fourth of the book is hers, then switches to someone else and so on. I wish that would have been clear in the synopsis before I started reading. It did throw me off a little because it was sort of a BAM! POV change. And it did that each time. No warning. :/

The next big problem I had with the book was there was a lot of telling and no showing. The character would go "okay, I need to learn how to do this" and then the POV would change and all the sudden we are learning the character did go learn what they needed but we are never privy to the lessons. I would have liked to see what all they learned and how they did it. Grow with the characters so I could stay connected to them. I never fully connected to anyone because you didn't get to stay with them for long enough. I would have liked this book better if it would have been in one, maybe two, characters POVs.

So those are my problems with the book. Besides those, I thought the ideas behind the plot were really interesting and liked the setting. For me, I just couldn't connect to the characters and that was the downfall, it was more personal on my part. If you are into creepy paranormal books, this might be a good one to look into.

My rating: 2.5/5

6 comments:

  1. I just reviewed this book and had the same problems with it that you did. I hated the jumping around and not really ever getting to know a character.

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    Replies
    1. It was really strange. It could have at least just had the characters name at the top of each new chapter so we would know whose head we were in at the time.

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  2. Oh the jumping from character to character without some warning would annoy me too. Sorry you're not having much luck.

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  3. I have been having difficulty finding good YA books recently too. I think I need to take a break from reviewing YA ARCs and just read YA books that I know that are good. :)

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    Replies
    1. I might have to do the same thing soon. I have a few arcs to get through and some new books coming out that I'm really excited for.

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