(Cover picture courtesy of Manda’s Movements.)

Now Death wants her back

Pierce knows what it’s like to die, because she’s done it before.  Though she tried returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can’t help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it.  yet she’s never alone…because someone is always watching her.

Now she’s moved to a new town, but even here, he finds her.  Pierce knows he’s no guardian angel, and his dark world isn’t exactly heaven, yet she can’t stay away…especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

If she lets herself fall any further, Pierce may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.

The myth of Persephone…darkly reimagined.

Could there possibly be a more confusing way to tell what should be a straightforward story?  What happened to a linear narrative?  Or at least one that makes sense?

Meg Cabot is a great author, no doubt about that.  I loved her Airhead trilogy and Abandon is still well-written.  However, I had a very hard time figuring out what the heck was going on as Pierce described three different points in her past all at once.  We jump around from her grandpa’s death to the incident at her old school after her death to her first death and it’s just terribly confusing.  If you’re going to give your readers some backstory, at least give it in a logical order!  (And yes, I’m actually quite mad about this because this could have been a great story with a little logic added to how the backstory was presented.)

Okay, so once I actually figured out what was going on, I sort of did enjoy the story.  Pierce is a decent enough character and you can actually feel her emotional struggles as she tries to cope with life after coming back from the dead.  Her confused feelings about John, her loneliness, etc. were all very real and made her an interesting character.  Her altruistic side came through often, which makes her much more sympathetic than a lot of YA heroines.  John himself seems like kind of a jerk to me, but unlike some love interests there’s potential for him to change in the next book.  And he also has a legitimate reason for being a jerk, again unlike a lot of love interests.

If you can figure out the plot, it’s quite fast-paced and there are some pretty interesting twists.  There are parallels to the Persephone myth for those of you that like Greek mythology, but Abandon doesn’t stick strictly to it.  That way it’s close enough to add another dimension to the story without making it completely predictable.  And now that Pierce’s backstory has been established, I will be reading the next book, Underworld in the hope that without so much plot confusion it will be a decent book.  However, I will be borrowing the next book from the library, not buying it.  I’m still kind of wary.

I give this book 3/5 stars.

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