Girl Divided by Willow Rose

Girl Divided is a standalone novel and creates a story about old Gods in legends and their influence in present-day life. There are some spoilers ahead but if you were reading the story you would have figured them out already anyway.

Jetta was born with unique markings on her face. A line right down the middle divides her into half-black and half-white. The second American civil war breaks out where any black person is believed to be evil and placed in camps or killed. Jetta finds herself in a unique situation in that she doesn’t really fit into either side. She meets Tyler in a camp and together they are able to break out to try and find freedom elsewhere. On the journey Jetta discovers that she is the daughter of Shango, an African God of fire and lightning, and Lovitar, a Finnish Goddess of death. With these genes running through her will she be able to end the divisive conflict and save mankind?

I have read a number of this author’s books and again she is such a hit and miss. This was a miss for me. Firstly the fact that pretty much every single white person in the book suddenly turned against every other race and was willing to kill them was a bit abrupt. It was confusing as to who was actually in the black population as originally it was everyone who was not white and then other races were brought in and then they were not black enough. The fact that Jetta could hide either side of her face from others merely by pulling her hoodie down did not sit well – how does a hoodie hide a vertical side perfectly? I think the thing that nearly stopped me reading (and I generally read a book all the way through as I owe the author an honest opinion) was when all of a sudden Jetta could command armies of the dead (as she is now in charge of black and white)and she summons them all to a battle. The number described, however, is hundreds of millions. How on earth do hundreds of millions of dead people all get together in one spot? Jetta also has an unfortunate influence on others where if there is peace, conflict will emerge. Since she is two living in one you would think that she would be able to do the opposite.

The book suddenly ended at 87%, which was a bit annoying as I tend to keep an eye on the space left as you can gauge what could be coming up. But actually, I was quite glad. I much prefer some of the fantasy and thriller books that the author has published and just feel that this one missed the mark in so many ways. The basic idea was very interesting but the execution was not for me. I will say that I looked up more info on the characters mentioned in the book and learnt of the mythology so that was one good thing to take away. The actual story, not so much...

Enlightened by Billie Kowalewski

Enlightened is a romantic fantasy for YA and is the first in a series.

Harmony is one of the souls in Artopia that is sent to Earth for their life lessons. She has a guide who takes care of her and is able to hear her thoughts and try to steer her through the process of education in life lessons. As the souls reach the end of the lesson, they are pulled back to Artopia where there is a full unpacking and sharing of learning. Harmony realises that if she concentrates hard enough on Earth, she has some memory of where she is from so is able to look for her classmates and possibly draw them together before they get pulled back. Her feelings for her classmate Kaleb, however, seem to run deeper than just a little liking. He has confessed his love to her and she is confused. Her last life on Earth, where she lost her boyfriend, was torture, and she nearly died of a broken heart. How is this linked to Kaleb and her feelings on Earth and Artopia for him? Surely it should not be this intense?

The blurb that was offered told of a number of lives that ended accidentally but all belonged to one person, which intrigued me. As I began the book, the author states in her dedication that she will see her father after school. In hindsight I understand it, but in the beginning, it made me think that the author was a young girl/teenager and the style of the first couple of pages reinforced this. I was shocked when I realised she was an adult as the writing is very fluffy and on a very high emotional level with lots of exclamation points strewn all over. I hate bashing peoples’ works, but I think that’s the beauty of being a reviewer – there is something for everyone, and this was just not for me.

You have a soul who has life lessons on Earth. So many questions. Right then, does that mean that all people on Earth are souls? If so, why bother to go at all? If not, why Earth? When do the lessons end? Why do they not occur in Earth’s timeline sequence? What happens if their lessons cause a butterfly effect? What happens to the people on Earth once an accidental death has taken place? How do they recover? The barrier between worlds prevents them from remembering who they are, but this would mean that they would not be able to incorporate it into the next mission to Earth as they would not remember it from Artopia. It would also mean that what was about to happen on Earth must have been preknown by the guides or they are just sent there randomly? What if they learn the same lesson over and over? The whole concept of the story didn’t make sense once you looked deeper into it, and to get to the concept took a long time. The beginning of the story was very confusing and I nearly put it aside quite a few times, but felt I owed the author a full review so slogged on.

Once Harmony realises that she and Kaleb are meant to be soul mates the style of writing becomes OTT. Over the space of a few pages she mentions running her hands through his silky sandy-blonde hair a fair number of times and he touches her long brown curls over and over again. The repetition was beginning to drive me nuts. Also his honey-scent and her floral scent and them breathing it in and going “ahhh” gets repeated over and over. Now I’m all for a good YA love story, but when the characters are teenagers and the story has them tied into soul mates and they feel that their love is so intense that they cannot live without each other and feel empty enough to kill themselves, then warning bells start ringing. To advocate that a person’s validation only comes from the love of another is a dangerous message to send out. In fact Edward and Bella from Twilight spring to mind.

It’s unfortunate that so many negatives stuck in my mind with this book instead of the positives that I’m sure were there. Well done to the author for taking on the idea, but the book just did not resonate with me and the (obvious) cliffhanger that ended it, reinforced the fact that I would not read the next in the series. I really hope there are others out there that will connect on a better level with the book than I did. On the plus side, the grammar and spelling were well taken care of.

Thank you to Voracious Readers Only and the author for the opportunity to review the book.