*ARC* Of Scars and Stardust - Review

Of Scars and Stardust

By: Andrea Hannah

Published: October 8, 2014 by Flux

336 pages

Source: ARC from publisher via Netgalley

(Goodreads / Amazon)

Summary:

After her little sister mysteriously vanishes, seventeen-year-old Claire Graham has a choice to make: stay snug in her little corner of Manhattan with her dropout boyfriend, or go back to Ohio to face the hometown tragedy she's been dying to leave behind. 

But the memories of that night still haunt her in the city, and as hard as she tries to forget what her psychiatrist calls her "delusions," Claire can't seem to escape the wolf's eyes or the blood-speckled snow. Delusion or reality, Claire knows she has to hold true to the most important promise she's ever made: to keep Ella safe. She must return to her sleepy hometown in order to find Ella and keep her hallucinations at bay before they strike again. But time is quickly running out, and as Ella's trail grows fainter, the wolves are becoming startlingly real.

Now Claire must deal with her attraction to Grant, the soft-spoken boy from her past that may hold the secret to solving her sister's disappearance, while following the clues that Ella left for only her to find. Through a series of cryptic diary entries, Claire must unlock the keys to Ella's past—and her own—in order to stop another tragedy in the making, while realizing that not all things that are lost are meant to be found.

MY REVIEW:
Unfortunately I had a lot of "life happens" interruptions while trying to read this book and that resulted in me putting it down and picking it up for short snippets here and there over a month long period. 336 pages in a month?! That's ridiculously slow for me. My interest level never really grew enough for me to want to come back to the story. And because of that my overall rating dropped some. I couldn't seem to get deep enough involved with the story line or the characters. The character development also seemed lacking, especially where Grant and Claire are concerned.

What the....what on earth?! I'm so incredibly confused by this book. I liked the uniqueness of the disappearance of Claire's sister and the other little girl in their town, the mystery that surrounds both of the girls disappearances. But I was left with a whole lot of confusion and unanswered questions at the end. It's not often I read a book where I feel like I need someone to explain to me what just occurred. This is one of them.

Small town, Amble, Ohio has a lot of legends about wolves. These wolves are said to attack people and they crave cherry flavoring or cherry scents, oh and the color of periwinkle. Claire's thirteen year old sister is attacked one night and fifteen year old Claire is to blame for her injuries. To keep her out of jail her parents have her evaluated by a psychiatrist and sent to Manhattan to live with an aunt. While living with the aunt, 2 years later her sister goes missing and Claire finally goes back home to try to figure out what has happened to her. Along the way she and Grant connect once again (someone she was close with before leaving) and he helps her to piece together clues that Ella seemingly left behind. Claire believes the wolves have taken Ella, that they were the ones who attacked Ella in the cornfield and the other missing girl in town and she will get the proof she needs to prove it to everyone else.

I thought this book was going in a completely different direction - one that I was totally on board with and anxiously waiting to see the conclusion. But woah - the way it went was crazy weird and I still don't understand what I just read. What about Rae? Patrick? Grant? Ella and Claire's parents? Ella for crying out loud?

There were a TON of grammatical errors throughout the ebook version I received from Netgalley. Missing words, words inserted where they shouldn't have been, the wrong usage of words given the context of the sentence (example: using "her" when it should've been "him"). That many errors made it harder to read.

Overall it just felt extremely strange. So yeah, my initial reaction stands. What the what?! Sorry guys, this one just wasn't for me.

Favorite Quotes:
"Sometimes, the unknown is far scarier than what's really there, when you're ready to look."

And maybe that's just what we were now: two people with broken sisters that needed to stitch each other back together with hand squeezes and stillness. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's more than okay.

"It's just that, you're one of those people that can do anything, if you want to," he breathed. "You're kinda like magic, Claire."

I wondered which was more lethal: What was inside the cornfield, or out. And did it even matter anymore?

Final Rating - 2.5 stars

This post is part of the ARC Thursday feature on Words Fueled by Love.