Shadow Hills: Meh...just okay.

After her sister Athena's tragic death, it's obvious that grief-stricken Persephone "Phe" Archer no longer belongs in Los Angeles. Hoping to make sense of her sister's sudden demise and the cryptic dreams following it, Phe abandons her bubbly LA life to attend an uptight East Coast preparatory school in Shadow Hills, MA — a school which her sister mysteriously mentioned in her last diary entry before she died.

Once there, Phe quickly realizes that something is deeply amiss in her new town. Not only does Shadow Hills' history boast an unexplained epidemic that decimated hundreds of its citizens in the 1700s, but its modern townies also seem eerily psychic, with the bizarre ability to bend metal. Even Zach — the gorgeous stranger Phe meets and immediately begins to lust after — seems as if he is hiding something serious. Phe is determined to get to the bottom of it. The longer she stays there, the more she suspects that her sister's untimely death and her own destiny are intricately linked to those who reside in Shadow Hills.

Book Review:

Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus

3 stars out of 5

Meh...this was just okay. I'd heard a lot of hype for Shadow Hills and was excited to read it. While it did have some original paranormal aspects and I usually love boarding school settings, I just couldn't get excited about this one. It felt like lots of elements, plot lines, and characters all mish-mashed together, leaving the story feeling really choppy and chaotic.

Also, Shadow Hills had way too much teenage drinking for my taste. Phe is only supposed to be 15, but she talks about all these parties she went to in L.A. at what, age 13 or 14? Yeah, I know teens drink, smoke, and do drugs, but the book seemed to glamorize these things. I was bothered by all of these 15-year-olds running wild at this boarding school with no real supervision having drinking parties in the woods with no real consequences.

Shadows Hills was an okay read, but nothing I'd recommend to a friend. I don't even know if I care enough to read the sequel, which was so conveniently set up at the end. I know others liked this debut novel a lot, but it just wasn't for me.