REVIEW: Firelight

Book: Firelight by Sophie Jordan
Release Date: September 7th 2010 by HarperTeen
Pages: 326 Pages
Source: Library Copy

A hidden truth.
Mortal enemies.
Doomed love.

Marked as special at an early age, Jacinda knows her every move is watched. But she longs for freedom to make her own choices. When she breaks the most sacred tenet among her kind, she nearly pays with her life. Until a beautiful stranger saves her. A stranger who was sent to hunt those like her. For Jacinda is a draki, a descendant of dragons whose greatest defense is her secret ability to shift into human form.

Forced to flee into the mortal world with her family, Jacinda struggles to adapt to her new surroundings. The only bright light is Will. Gorgeous, elusive Will who stirs her inner draki to life. Although she is irresistibly drawn to him, Jacinda knows Will's dark secret: He and his family are hunters. She should avoid him at all costs. But her inner draki is slowly slipping away—if it dies she will be left as a human forever. She'll do anything to prevent that. Even if it means getting closer to her most dangerous enemy.

Mythical powers and breathtaking romance ignite in this story of a girl who defies all expectations and whose love crosses an ancient divide.

Firelight took me a while to read. Mainly because it got pretty boring and repetitive after the first ten chapters or so. But nevertheless, I finished it and here I am with the review.

Nicole's Review:

Honestly, this book disappointed me. If I took out the word draki and replaced it with vampire, Firelight would have been frighteningly similar to Twilight. There was the main character who just could not make up her mind about the "dangerous" love interest (in this case, his name is Will). The main character, Jacinda, is also attracted to someone who could potentially harm her (Will kills draki, otherwise known as her kind). And she spends a great deal of time thinking about this Will.

Huh. Well, doesn't that sound like Bella Swan of Twilight who falls in love with the "dangerous" "you-should-stay-away-from-me" Edward (who also happens to be a vampire that drinks blood). Not to mention, Jacinda is the new girl as well.

Mostly, the part where Will kept reminding Jacinda that he and his cousins are dangerous, just really annoyed me. It sounded just like when Edward kept pushing Bella away from him because he was "dangerous" as well. I seriously found myself cringing at the similarities. 

I guess I could complain about all of them, but then this list would take forever, so I'll just continue on with the romance between Jacinda and Will.

Firstly, there was insta-love. When Jacinda first met Will in the cave with her draki-form, he was supposedly to kill her. Yet as he came closer to her, she started noticing the way he looked, like the color of his eyes and stuff. If it was me, I'd probably start screaming and act all hysterical. Just saying. But then when Will didn't kill her (and let her go), the whole scene turned a lot friendlier than I'd imagine it to. It was like he didn't kill draki and was her boyfriend instead. She also started thinking about him..a lot.

So yup, there was insta-love. And before I rant on about how obvious the insta-love was, I'm going to add in that the lack of realistic-ness of this story bothered me. I know it's a story about draki (descendants of dragons) but there was also this too fake cliche mist surrounding this book.

Jacinda's mom had agreed for her to move to a new town and out of all the towns there were in the whole USA, they had to go to the one where Will lived. Hmm...what a concidence...

Then there's Brooklyn, the mean girl who likes Will in that more than a friend way. In case it isn't obvious, she's the cliche cheerleader girl. And she happens to be a cheerleader in the story too (how ironic).

Okay, but besides that,Will (who doesn't know Jacinda in her human form) obviously finds an attraction to Jacinda "the new girl" and Brooklyn would feel jealous. So then that happens, but it also results in a total catfight between Brooklyn and Jacinda in the girl's bathroom.

Bullies do exist, and so do mean girls, but a catfight over a guy?

And then there was Jacinda's personality. She was a dull flat character whose thoughts annoyed me to death. Half way through the book, I started skimming and flipping through pages like it was a chore.

I think what truly annoyed me the most was just basically Will and Jacinda's relationship. It seemed so fake, yet the whole book was about them. A lot of unneccesary things also happened (such as their relationship) and I felt like this book could have been better off as a adventure novel instead of a romance one.

So, in conclusion, I didn't enjoy this book at all. It had a lot of potential, I admit, but it didn't live up to its expectations. The plot of dragons and their prides could have worked out pretty well, but with Jacinda's infatuation over Will, which took the whole book, it didn't make a good combo. This book might as well be without the whole dragon thing. I would have liked a lot more adventure in this book (since there was basically none in Firelight).

 

The Summary:

The Good Points: Quick to read, lots of romance (if you're a romance person)

The Bad Points: Jacinda's personality, insta-love with Will, really cliche and predictable, too much romance (if you're not a romance person)

Final Rank: 

1     2     3     4     5

I'm giving this book a two because of its lack of a real plot. The whole time, it was just about Jacinda's romance with Will. Nothing even happened, unless you count all those "events" involving Jacinda and Will's relationship. The only real action it had was at the real end, which of course, involved Will as well. Unless you're a huge fan of romance and cliches in fantasy books, you probably shouldn't read this book, because it might get incredibly boring for you. I'm currently reading the sequel to give it a second chance, so hopefully the series will turn out better than this awfully disappointing beginning.