Because I will never have enough of Secret Societies.
NOTE: Thanks to TBRandbeyond tours for this book tour stop!
It's been a while since I've done my longer reviews on this site, but I am always so grateful to TBRandbeyond tours for the opportunity to participate in this tour. This is the first time I've heard of this book but the blurb caught my attention and here we are now.
So, here we go.
Song Vibe Check:
"Glowing" By: Nikki Williams
"Starlight" By: Star Darlings
"Rise" By: Katy Perry
Short Summary: Imagine if your father is a politician that passes laws against people with supernatural powers all to discover that you are hiding starlight that makes you a supernatural person.
Long Summary: Sixteen-year-old Alexia has a secret; she’s a Varien—burdened with the gift of shooting stars through her skin. And after watching her best friend Sarai get falsely accused of murder upon changing into a Varien, Alexia wants no one to know. She keeps her secret tight and close until an accident with her strange abilities critically injures her father—threatening her identity to be revealed. Alexia flees and goes on the run to avoid death row.
While in transit, she meets Greta, a quirky antique shop owner who promises her safety with other Variens in a realm called The Grove. Alexia is skeptical, but once she learns Sarai has been kidnapped from prison and taken to The Grove to be sacrificed by Revenirs, a secret society of hitmen, she becomes intent on finding and saving her from another dire fate.
There, Alexia rooms with a pyrokinetic hot head who can’t stop kissing her boyfriend and takes tours with her assigned campus mentor—a wise-cracking morphing teleporter named Kyle. With the help of her newfound friendships, Alexia delves deeper into The Grove’s hidden history for clues on the present. All she wants is to find Sarai and save her. But the closer she gets to the Revenirs, the more danger she and her friends are in. Alexia must decide if friendship is worth the wrath of war and suffering, and even worse ... betrayal.
As I read this one, it reminded me of sort of a new rebirth of X-MEN with the concept of the variants being like the mutants we see in X-MEN. The story is an intriguing one with a heroine that you can't help but feel for as she goes through her journey of acceptance and of using her voice to defend mutants, but most of all, to face the world and to embrace the power that makes her special. While the pace would at times drag, it was still an interesting read filled with pop culture references that readers will definitely recognize.
Overall: 3/5 stars
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