Review: Anathema by K.A. Tucker

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Author: K.A. Tucker

Evangeline has spent her teenage years in obscurity. Her foster parents have the emotional aptitude of robots and her classmates barely acknowledge her existence. About to turn eighteen and feeling like a social pariah, she is desperate to connect with someone. Anyone. 

When Evangeline meets Sophie after literally stumbling upon her café, she believes she’s found that connection. Willing to do anything to keep it, she accepts a job as Sofie’s assistant and drops everything to fly to Manhattan, where she is thrust into a luxurious world of Prada, diamonds, and limitless cash. 

With such generosity and kindness, it’s easy for Evangeline to dismiss certain oddities... like Sofie’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior, and the monstrous guard dogs. She’s even willing to dismiss her vivid dreams of mob-style murders, beautiful homeless people living in caves, and white-eyed demons that haunt her each night as figments of her imagination—especially when one of those figments is the gorgeous Caden. When she wakes up with bite marks on her neck, the fairy tale quickly turns into a nightmare. She slowly unravels the mystery surrounding Sofie and friends, and the reality of the bites and the “dreams.” What she discovers is far more mysterious and terrible than anything she could have imagined. 

In a world where everyone has motive to lie for personal gain, Evangeline must decide which deception is least likely to get her killed.

BOOK REVIEW:

The beginning of this book is promising - the prologue, intriguing. I admired Evangeline's genuine concern for the homeless person. She was portrayed as a nice, naive, lonely girl and I bought it. But the moment she arrived at New York (with a person she knew less than 24 hours), it went downhill for me. Badly.

It could've been a good story, you know. Alternate Earth, Vampire Sorceress, Mentally-Talking Dogs: what's not to like? Oh, I don't know - could it be the plot holes? infodumping? pathetic instalove? convenient solutions? lack of a respectable villain? You tell me.

I was in physical pain while reading Anathema. Probably from too many face palms and headdesks.  The amount of stupidity in this book is staggerring. There are no intelligent life forms in here, especially the heroine. So be warned.

Our heroine, Evangeline, wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a mammoth and a dog. Why? Because she is slower than a dead snail (no offense to the dead snail). 

Listen kids, if you are ever in doubt whether you're dreaming or not, pinch yourself. If you're in pain, you are 100% awake. Go on, try it. Don't be like our little miss Evangeline here - tripped, bled, bitten, tossed around and still asked herself:  Am I dreaming? 

The answer is: No, dumbass.

... then I felt pain. Sharp, stabbing pain as something pierced my exposed neck. My mouth opened to scream but only a gurgle escaped. I struggled to break free, swinging my arms in defense, but every move sent jolts of acute pain through my body, as if I were snagged on a barbwire fence.

"Are you okay?”

"I will be … when I wake up from this nightmare,” I whispered. I keep forgetting this isn’t real.

Are you kidding me? THIS IS REAL AND YOU ARE NOT SLEEPING.

Figuring out that something weird is going on is easy when... I don't know, SOMETHING WEIRD is actually going on.

Body parts were strewn everywhere, heads practically decapitated, necks torn wide open. And blood—pools of it. So much blood that it stained the forest floor bright crimson.

YES. Body parts qualify as something being weird. And you know what? If people I just met locked me inside a house, with no valid reason whatsoever, I WILL escape and run back home.

But no! She didn't question the killing and proceeded to pet the goddamn killer dog. How sweet. She also never showed any anger (which is unrealistic people) even for the person who killed her mother. Instead, she felt afraid and GUILTY!

No, just NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! And another....

There was SO MUCH infodumping it's not even funny. 

And I also learned from this novel that providing relevant details is not that important.

It was finally time I asked. “Sofie, how does this spell work?” She heaved a loud sigh. “It’s complicated.”

And the love story is also complicated... well, NOT REALLY - just your basic, run-of-the-mill instalove. Heroine is human. Male lead is vampire. Male lead thinks he is too dangerous for heroine. Heroine wants to jump him anyway. Male lead says "I love you but ewww!"

"You are too much, woman."

Seeing this as a vampire novel, I expected some badass monster villain. Preferably something like this:

Instead, we got a...  

Vampire Bitch

And a couple of...

Only they are 100x more good-looking and rich.

What a disappointment! Reading this book had been a slow and agonizing experience for me.

RATING: