Teardrop by Lauren Kate

I have to admit that I am very torn on this book. The setup for what I think is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy was actually very interesting. The story goes that the main girl, Eureka who we first see almost drown in what she thinks is an accident that took the life of her mother. Right away the reader knows it was no accident so that was good (in these kinds of situations I like it when the reader gets to know things the main character does not. It’s suspenseful to keep reading and waiting for the main character to catch up). And what her mother has left her with are a locket, a letter, an oddly shaped stone, and a promise that she never cry.

Then a whole slew of strange things start happening. Her best guy friend is behaving very oddly. She’s being followed around by a strange guy named Ander who she happens to feel a very close affinity to. And the woman who starts translating her book reveals a story of love, loss, and what happened to the mysterious island of Atlantis.

This story had so much potential but it feel flat in quite a few places. Eureka’s parents divorced when she was young, her mother dies just a few pages into the book, she became suicidal and yet she is so naïve and you’d think her life experiences would make her more open to bad or potentially bad situations. She doesn’t see anything wrong when her friend becomes verbally abusive and puts her twin siblings in danger even though she supposedly cares about them more than anyone else in the world. She is attracted to and not really very suspicious of the strange guy following her around. I mean I know there are plenty of teenage girls like that in the world but I wish more authors would write strong female characters (which Eureka does kind of turn into but not until the last little bit of the story).

The other issue that I had was the writing in general. There were so many cheesy comparisons and inflated passages on things that didn’t matter. I distinctly remember a vivid five sentence paragraph describing what was growing on the surface of a marsh when the marsh in question was a location for one scene in the book and then never touched upon again. It just got to be too much sometimes.

So all in all I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to bother finishing the series whenever the rest of the books comes out. It may be a case where I won’t add them to my “to read” lists but I might check the books out at the library if I see it.