A Secret Surrender by Darcy Burke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Adventure wraps itself around you as it steals away with your heart. Selina and Harry are a captivating pair. Chess is their game of choice and there's always a twist waiting to upset the game. Burke exercises more than the heart with her unpredictable storytelling. She puts the mind to work as well. A Secret Surrender is a stunning whirlwind of danger, romance and emotion that pulls readers into a dynamic seduction that is hard to break free of.



View all my reviews

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

one didn't work for me at all. I hate writing less than favorable reviews. If I am not enjoying a book, I will usually not finish the book and don't spend any time writing a review for it. This was one of those books that kept me reading and things were heading towards a generous 3-star rating before I got to the last parts of this book.

This book is told through journal entries from a group of high school students. It took me a while to really remember what was going on in each of the kid's lives. The two male students were a little more distinctive but the three female students tended to blend a bit in my head. I did eventually get a better feel for each of the characters and it helped that their lives started to become more connected as the book progressed.

My biggest problem with this book is the ending. I should really say the lack of an ending. I have read books that end in cliffhangers and while it is not my favorite, I have learned to deal with it. This was worse than a normal cliffhanger. This felt like someone ripped a book in half and only gave you part of it. There was no resolution whatsoever when this book came to an abrupt stop. Instead of making me want to rush out and grab the next book in this series, I am completely turned off from this series.

I am not recommending this book to others. I liked the concept of following this group of students through their journal entries but considering the fact that there is no resolution when the book comes to an abrupt stop, I found it to be a very unsatisfying read.

I received a digital review copy of this book from the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers - Poppy via NetGalley.

Initial Thoughts
Why did I even read this? This was not good. I thought about giving up at one point but decided to push on. I should have stopped while I was ahead. It took me a while to really get a feel for each of the kids and I wouldn't say that I really liked any of them. I probably would have rated the book 3 stars if it wasn't for that ending. Or I should say the lack of an ending. The book just stopped without resolving anything. This was worse than a cliffhanger because we finally got just a little bit of action and then there was no more book. I won't bother reading the next book in the series.

The title of the novel is what caught my eye so I picked it up the other day at the library. I thought the bright colorful glossy illustrations were a plus but after reading this novel, there wasn’t anything special about this graphic novel that pulled me in. I was hoping for something different. I felt like everything was revealed in the end and there was no suspense, no mystery to carry me through the novel. It felt like one of those novels where this happened, then this happened and then this happened and then this all because of this (big reveal). Couldn’t the author give us readers a bit of the big reveal in the writing, I really needed something to drag me through this novel.

The novel began with a girl, bloody and bruised, inside a cemetery. Who she is and how she got there is a mystery. She decides to stay inside there since that is where someone put her and she’s afraid of what lies outside the cemetery walls. She takes the names of the dead as her own, finding names from the burial sites surrounding her, as her own name is lost to her. Celexa feels safe inside her new fortress yet she realizes that the spirits of the dead can see her as she makes her way around the graveyard. Celexa finds food from various individuals nearby and she ponders what her next steps will be. Graveyards are an attraction for individuals and this one is no acceptation. One evening, Celexa comes upon a group of teens out for a night of fun and she watches them from a distance. Their fun turns deadly and Celexa cannot believe what she is seeing. Memories flood her mind, but there is something off about these memories.

I really enjoyed the facial images in the illustrations. I liked the bright illustrations that were set against the black outline of this novel, as I thought they added to the peculiar setting of this novel. My final thoughts, as she is living in the graveyard what is she really doing every day? As she is looking for food every day, who allows someone to break into their house, eat their food and is not all concerned about who it is? I just couldn’t grasp this. I’m not sure if I will continue to read this series or not, I am wondering if it will be same concept as this first novel.

It’s been awhile since I read a book as bad as this one. Honestly, though I have friends who have read the Monster High series and I knew this probably wasn’t going to be quality literature when I started reading, I didn’t expect something this boring. It’s not even that it was poorly written (though it kind of was), but just that there seemed to be literally no point to the entire story at all. The characters were juvenile, at best, even for freshman in high school. And to top it off, they were all completely emotionally unstable. (Not to mention the complete lack of self-awareness and maturity of any kind.) I wouldn’t even recommend this to younger audiences because it’s not a good introduction to young adult literature and we really shouldn’t be teaching kids that things like this is what they should be reading.

An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

What I Liked:

HAH. HAHAHAHAH. 

Okay.

This book was junk. Honestly. We're supposed to be concerned with these students because they're supposedly the top five freshman in their high school, right? The "Phoenix Five"? Well, the Phoenix Five aren't supposed to even be nominated until April in their school year.

This book ends mid-October!

It was just terrible. I'm still reeling from the fact that there was a blatant reference to Monster High--who talks about one of their books in one of their other books?--and I wanted to pull my hair out every time Vanessa said "FOE NO YOU DIZN'T". The HECK is that even supposed to mean??

So done. The "cliffhanger" was just lazy writing. I'm not even going to bother reading the second book--and I hate leaving a series unfinished. But this? UGH. I just can't do it again.