Series: The Lost Boys, #1
Publisher: Ebury Press (Random House UK)
Release: Oct 24th 2013
Source: Netgalley
Pages: 512 (ebook)
( Amazon | Goodreads )
An intensely addictive romance novel about girls, ghosts, and forbidden love, ideal for fans of Stephenie MeyerFate has brought them together. But will it also keep them apart? Having moved to a strange town, 17-year-old Joey Gray is feeling a little lost, until she meets a cute, mysterious boy near her new home. But there’s a very good reason why Tristan Halloway is always to be found roaming in the local graveyard. Perfect for fans of Stephenie Meyer and Lauren Kate, The Lost Boys is a magical, romantic tale of girl meets ghost.
I was never a fan of Stephenie Meyer despite her overwhelming fame brought on by the Twilight series. Thus, the tagline in the blurb did more damage than good when it comes to drawing my attention. But one can hardly ever walk away from a ghost story that easy, even though now I wish I had done just that.
Instead of being a heartbreaking mystery romance filled with suspense and tension, The Lost Boys is merely a cliched high school drama that uses ghosts as characters to explain away all the ridiculousness and absurdity one can undoubtedly recognize from the plot. It also suffers severely from the rather infamous trope of "everyone is drop dead gorgeous" by introducing characters that are simply too perfect to be true (This might have fooled and dazzled me in my earlier days, but no-no, not now). Though to Lilian Carmine's credit, she did manage to gain some of my respect by giving a few of them their unique personalities.
As a whole, I found The Lost Boys extremely lacking in the mystery department, but that is partially my own fault since nowhere in the synopsis has promised me anything of that nature. As a matter of fact, the biggest mystery has already been revealed before you even go into the book. Being a "romantic tale of girl meets ghost", I spent more time than I wanted drowning in boredom while waiting for our MC, Joe, to find out that this handsome young boy she is secretly crushing on is actually a ghost. Even with this lengthy build up, their romance still felt halfhearted but interesting enough to keep me going.
For a 500+ pages book, The Lost Boys is surprisingly easy to read. It didn't give me the feeling of moving a mountain across my shoulders, but it could still be condensed further regardless. Particularly, a round of character elimination would be greatly beneficial as well as removing all the unnecessary subplots. Additionally, Carmine's writing also left much to be desired. Although quite readable, her lack of experience and skill with her craft is fairly obvious to notice, though nothing out of the norm to how you would usually expect from a debut author.
Without a doubt, The Lost Boys can be enjoyable for many others, so long as you have the proper mindset and expectations before starting it. But for me, it failed to provide excitement and unpredictability for which I was seeking. Nevertheless, I will probably check out the next book just to see how things have progressed, but that will be a story for another day.
My Rating: ★★☆ (2 and 1/2 stars)
(A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
Oh....500 pages?? That does NOT turn me on in the slightest. Ek. I've heard a lot of stuff about this being quite mediocre. At first I thought it was some sort of cool Peter Pan rewrite, and I got all excited. But I don't think so, right? Mmm...well, this is such a good review, but I don't think I'll be going for this one any time soon. :)
ReplyDeleteNo, this doesn't related to Peter Pan at all, just an accident I suppose. This is by no means something that should take priority in your TBR list, more on the line of "this is not that bad if you want to try out". I was kinda surprised at how fast I read it considering the length, that was definitely a plus.
DeleteI have been contemplating on whether to read this or not ever since I saw it on Wattpad, lol! I'm not a fan of promising synopses that end up being high school TV dramas, haha! But I don't really read from Wattpad-turned-published authors because I'm not prepared for all the possible grammatical errors or unprofessional writing. But I'm glad you thought it was easy to read, despite it's ginormous size, lol. Lovely review, Angel!
ReplyDeleteThe book is pretty well edited grammar wise, I just wish the editor had cut down the length a bit because a lot of the chapters/subplots are kind of useless and nonessential. The beginning was pretty slow, the middle got better and was quite interesting, but then the end went back to being uneventful :( So it kinda left me bitter with disappointments.
DeleteI've read a few excellent 'girl meets ghost' stories, and I won't have them spoiled by something quite so mediocre. This was never even on my radar, and I'm glad to see I wasn't mistaken.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts, Angel!
Good for you Maja, you should give me a couple recommendations because I do love this type of stories! And yeah, I wouldn't be too sad about missing this one.
DeleteWait, is Joey a guy or a girl?
ReplyDeleteNothing confuses me more than a girl with a boys name.
I honestly thought this book is a Peter Pan retelling, but even trough it wasn't the Stephanie Mayer/Lauren Kate similarity killed any desire to read it.
I'm glad you didn't suffer much trough it :)
Oh god, I wasn't going to rant about that, but now I guess I have the duty to do so. The main character is a girl and her name is Joe. Lilian Carmine purposely chose this name. In fact, she even took a good chunk of time writing how Joe bickers about everyone's response when people find out her name is a boy name. I really have no idea why she engineered the everything to be like this and I don't see how naming her Joe has any importance :/
DeleteUgh, sounds like one I should stay away from!
ReplyDeleteMissie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
Yeah...not the best way to spend your time.
DeleteI've had this book for a while, but every time I pop in blogs and see their reviews, they seem to be rather disappointed, too. I'm not sure when my mood for this book will kick in, but I have to read it because I paid for it! Thanks for the review, Angel!
ReplyDeleteYou might enjoy it more than I did :) There wasn't much that annoyed me which made reading it a pretty okay experience. I guess it's just that I was looking for something different.
DeleteThe 500 pages flashed out to me before I even saw the title of the book. I have to either be really interested or have seen excellent reviews to commit to a book of that length, especially if it had as many issues as you talked about. Ah, tropes. I'll most likely be avoiding this one.
ReplyDeleteI know. I'm kinda surprised at how fast I got through it, not my usual snail speed at all. Perhaps I'm getting better lol
DeleteYup, sounds like another frustrating Stephanie Meyer clone, using an interesting story as a front for a lame, ill written YA romance. Not for me, thanks for the review and warning Angel.
ReplyDeleteNo problem :) I'm somewhat losing faith in Random House these days, at least for the galleys they put up in Netgalley. I'm really expecting a much higher quality.
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