Intertwined (Giveaway Points Post)

Intertwined
by Gena Showalter
pub: Sept 2009
448 pages

Giveaway ALERT! If you've already entered the contest, a comment on this post (within 5 days of post date) gets you 2 extra entries in our MegaBook Giveaway. If you haven't entered yet, go to the contest post (or click on the contest link on the upper right sidebar) to learn about the giveaway and enter! Good luck!

Synopsis:
There's something about the new guy at Crossroads High...Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside of him: one can time-travel, one can raise the dead, one can tell the future, and one can possess another human. With no other family and a life spent in and out of institutions, Aden and the souls have become friends. But now they're causing them all kinds of trouble. Like he'll blink and suddenly he's a younger Aden reliving the past. One wrong move and he'll change the future. Or he'll walk past a total stranger and know how and when she's going to die. He's so over it. All he wants is peace. And then he meets a girl who quiets the voices. Well, as long as he's near her. Why? Mary Ann Gray is his total opposite. He's a loner; she has friends. He doesn't care what anyone thinks; she tries to make everyone happy. And while he attracts the paranormal, she repels it. For her sake he should stay away. But it's too late... Somehow they share an inexplicable bond of friendship. A bond about to be tested by a werewolf shapeshifer who wants Mary Ann for his own, and a vampire princess Aden can't resist. Two romances, both forbidden. Still the four will enter a dark underworld of intrigue and danger - but not everyone will come out alive...

A good editor should have gone through the book with a stern hand, but overall I enjoyed it. It's a paranormal version of the old movie, Heart and Souls, with Robert Downey, Jr. (Great movie, by the way.)

Aden is a strong and smart, but hot tempered character. The interactions between Aden and the four souls is absolutely wonderful and provide great comical relief at times. Three of the trapped souls are guys; one girl crazy, one shy, one level-headed. The last trapped soul is a woman, Eve, the mother hen who keeps all the boys in line. They bicker, they offer support, they lend their abilities - I could go on and on about how much I liked the interactions between Aden and the souls, but...

With this book, you get a little of everything: werewolves, vampires, fairies, witches, goblins, zombies, demons, ghosts, and more. It's a paranormal fan's dream book. And there are two romances going on here, two couples. Each relationship is different, but satisfying.

Now to what bothered me. The book starts with a bang which I loved but then loses momentum. My brother, Gregory, has a short attention span when it comes to books. They have to be fast-paced and well written to keep his attention. He passed me Intertwined after reading a hundred-some pages saying, "It slowed down, but you've got the patience to wait for pay-offs way in the distance. Here." If you're like Gregory, you won't find this book satisfying.

Sometimes the book was a broken record. Mary Ann or Aden would discover something, we'd discover it with them, and then we had to listen to them re-tell everything we'd learned last chapter to the other characters. It happened often. It was like Showalter didn't trust us to understand things the first time they were revealed. She had to tell us over, and over again.

Also, I can't find the point with a lot of the subplots. Mary Ann, for example. Her relationships with Tucker and Penny did nothing but take up pages. Maybe in the next book it will mean something? I don't know but the reader should receive some sort of payoff for slugging through their talks and I didn't. A lot of the subplots lead nowhere.

I really liked the ideas and main characters but found myself skimming. Intertwined is a book for avid paranormal fans, but you have to slog through some extra flotsam to revel in the good stuff.

I will be looking forward to the sequel as I am invested in the characters and want to see what happens next!

The Cover: I think it's awesome. I like the menacing look of the boy on the cover and the placement of the title is clever and the font is cool.

We have a copy of Intertwined available in our MegaBook Giveaway. Go the the contest post to enter!