Abandon

Like most Meg Cabot books, Abandon is a quick absorbing read. Having read most of her extensive ouevre, I would place this roughly in the middle of the pack so far as quality goes. The idea of Abandon was amazing; I was looking forward to this one so hard, because I was obsessed with Greek myth as a child. The myth of Persephone being tricked into the Underworld is not one of my favorites, but any Greek myth is better than none Greek myth.

Foreshadowing can be a super handy writing tool. However, it ought to be used sparingly and carefully. Meg Cabot did not follow this rule in the creation of this novel. Almost every chapter ended with a dramatic bit of foreshadowing of the "had I known what would happen next..." variety. Sigh. Just put 'to be continued' at the end of each chapter and be done with it. There just was not any need for it. If you have to try to force people to keep going with a lure of future drama, clearly your book wasn't interesting enough. Really, I think this would keep the intended audience going without these constant, hackneyed warnings.

Another weakness here was the odd subplot wherein Pierce tries to befriend the popular kids at her school (who usually ignore the D-Wing, aka truobled kids) students of the school) so that she can make them leave her cousin, Alex, and his friend Kayla alone. These sections really do not seem to fit with the rest of the plot very well. I imagine the need for this might be clear later in the series, but, for now, they were rather obnoxious, largely because Pierce's behavior seemed both out of character and completely illogical.

So far, the romance in the series has been pretty much entirely uninspired. I do not ship anyone and I actually find Pierce and John's relationship to rather creepy and Stockholm Syndrome-ish. The ending is not a resolution, so much as a stop because this novel had reached the requisite number of pages.

Mostly, Abandon was not what I was hoping for, but I will still be reading the rest of the series for sure. If you need a beach read for this summer, Abandon will likely suffice.

I love that the series is slightly based off of the Persephone myth. The characters on the other hand were not the best. Pierce comes off as extremely naive for a seventeen year old. John is a moody vague figure. The story doesn't lead up to them becoming a couple. John is barely there then bam now they love each other. This has potential to be an okay story and i hope the characters relationship grows properly. Not Cabot at her best.

liked it

I enjoyed the mystery of this book a lot. Not very suspenseful but it leaves you wondering what happened and who is this strange guy really is. I liked the modern take on a story from Greek mythology.

I love Meg Cabot books and greek mythology so I was sooooo excited about this book! Pierce, the daughter of a famous businessman and a nature conservationist almost dies after she drowns in her pool. In fact she did die but no one will believe what happened. Turns out she'd meet a death diety before at her grandfather's funeral so when she ends up in a strange place afer being in a pool the second before she naturally asks the one person who she's meet before to help her. Only he misunderstands and he brings her back to his house to be his consort so she can't 'move on' or go back to life but she escapes. The only proof she has that this ever happened is a necklace that came with her after she escaped.

Long story short it's a typical 'girl moves to new town after mysterious incident' story except the characters, like her friend Kayla or her cousin Alex, weren't really that well developed as I'd've liked them to be and John(the love interest and death diety) isn't really explained at all. Like we don't know why he's a death diety, he and Pierce never seriously talk unless it's arguing and the most we learn about him is from a freaky cemetery groundskeeper! The story seemed to catch up to itself pretty quickly at the end, like one minute it's pretty ordinary(like most of the rest of the book) but not boring and the next minute in like the last 15 pages all is revealed out of the blue.

On a more positive note Pierce was a great main character because she was pretty realistic, the storyline was unexpected and we don't get all the facts at once but they're sort of spread out throughout.

It wasn't what I expected and I don't know if that was a good thing or not.