Review: Lailah (The Styclar Saga #1) by Nikki Kelly

Title: Lailah

Series: The Styclar Saga #1
Author: Nikki Kelly
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: October 7, 2014
Pages: 416
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance
Source: Ebook

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Book Depository | Google

The girl knows she’s different. She doesn’t age. She has no family. She has visions of a past life, but no clear clues as to what she is, or where she comes from. But there is a face in her dreams – a light that breaks through the darkness. She knows his name is Gabriel.

On her way home from work, the girl encounters an injured stranger whose name is Jonah. Soon, she will understand that Jonah belongs to a generation of Vampires that serve even darker forces. Jonah and the few like him, are fighting with help from an unlikely Allie – a rogue Angel, named Gabriel.

In the crossfire between good and evil, love and hate, and life and death, the girl learns her name: Lailah. But when the lines between black and white begin to blur, where in the spectrum will she find her place? And with whom?

Gabriel and Jonah both want to protect her. But Lailah will have to fight her own battle to find out who she truly is.

MY REVIEW

This review contains SPOILERS. Read at your own risk.

This is going to be another one of those difficult three-star "I didn't hate it but I didn't love it" kind of reviews. I have some mixed feelings about this book. I liked it well enough, but it left me a little unfulfilled in some areas. Let me see if I can put this into words.

First off, this did not feel like a young adult book. It's labeled young adult, but the main character is about 200 years old. Sure, she's stuck in her 17-year-old body, but she has lived much more than that. Her mindset was not that of a young adult in my opinion. Sure, she doesn't know who she is (because she only catches glimpses of her past in visions) and has to figure that out, but it's not really in the same scope as a young adult book. She is really trying to find out WHAT she is, not WHO she is. This book felt much more like a new adult paranormal story than a young adult book. The main character was all on her own. No parents, no family, no friends. While she doesn't quite know what she is or much of her past, she is always in control of her life.

I felt that some of the things that happen in the story are just too coincidental and unlikely to seem realistic. For instance, the main character happens upon a vampire in distress and she helps him for no reason at all. Then she proceeds to offer up her own blood to help heal him since there are villains after him. She doesn't know him from a hole in the wall, but there she is risking her life for someone, a vicious vampire mind you, for no good reason at all. It was completely unconvincing. Then in the same scene, she proceeds to further the unbelievable when she takes a bullet for the vampire. For NO REASON AT ALL. Yes, that's right. And it gets more unbelievable when the one person that she has been having visions about for the entirety of her existence just happens to be one of the friends that were on their way to help this vampire. So there's that. It was just so far-fetched that I almost didn't continue reading since all of this plays out at the beginning of the book.

This book has a really bad case of telling the reader instead of showing the reader. The explanations about the angels and vampires are mostly held within a story that one of the main characters tells the other. It didn't unfold in the story. It was just all explained at once, which made it lose some of its magic. Most of the book feels like nothing is happening at all. There are different scenes where the characters go different places for different reasons, but most of the book is just the main character hiding out from the villains that are hunting her. The scenes could have felt like they had more purpose.

What this book does well is change things up with a compelling take on angels and vampires. I can honestly say that their histories in this book are unlike anything I've read before regarding either angels or vampires. I have to applaud the author for the originality. And the background on these creatures in her story is actually quite convincing and definitely piques the interest.

Another great quality of this book is the character development. The main character is hiding in the shadows of life at the beginning of the book, pretty much just running on auto-pilot and a sense of survival, and she is confronting her newly found heritage in the end and coming to terms with the relationships that she has made and come to cherish. She goes from being completely alone to having some semblance of a family and has the desire to protect them in the end even if it means her demise. The only thing that was iffy for me in this area was that I really didn't feel much for the main character. I could see her growth as the story progressed, but I didn't really feel a connection to her. I think that if the author would have included something about her to make her feel real then it would have been perfect. A hobby, skill, or passion of some sort that she had before her life was uprooted.

The best thing about this book for me was the romance. There is a love triangle in this one, and it was actually rather enjoyable to watch unfold. As long as love triangles are written well, they are okay in my book. And I think that this one was written well in terms of why the main character has feelings for two boys. There is doubt about one boy when he shows affection for another girl, even though he swears that there is nothing going on between them. And there is doubt for the other boy when another girl is pining for him. And there are enough convincing reasons for her to actually have feelings for each of them. The chemistry between the characters was done very well and it was very gripping from the start of the book where some of the other areas were lacking.

I had a lot of issues with this book but overall it was an okay read. I have enough interest to want to read the next book in this series, but as to when that will be, I can't say. If you are a fan of paranormal then this might be something that wins you over. It has enough good qualities that I would recommend it.