Lucy is the stereotypical Good Girl with Sucky Life who is practically begging for a pity party . . . all she needs are silly hats and balloons. All of that changes when she falls into an open grave — that's got a dying girl in side of it. The girl grips her hand, charring her palm, and warns her not to tell anyone what she's seen. Or she'll DIE. How does that make her life suck any less? Well, OBVIOUSLY because it introduces the love interest into her life, of course. Nothing says romance like imminent death. :)It's tempting to brush off as some sort of prank. Especially when, the next day, the girl is gone and a hot guy is standing there and tells her that “he” took who she was looking for. But he doesn't say who “he” is. This would be Byron, who is just as gothic as his namesake, and is the Good Boy/Bad Boy with Attitude Problems (think Mr. Darcy in the twenty-first century). He claims he wants to help her and gives her a necklace that nearly causes her to have a seizure in class. She sees unpleasant things and this makes her go into denial. (It's one of those weird hallucinatory flus from China. The kind that make you see dead people and give you ESP — HEY! It's been known to happen!!) And this girl is a TEXTBOOK CASE of denial. It's kind of unintentionally hilarious because danger will literally be staring her RIGHT in the face, with all its red-eyed glory, and she'll just blink and go, “Did anyone hear that gust of wind that sounded like sinister cackling?”Naturally, Lucy's step-sister/step-cousin, Angela, thinks that she is a total freak for having all these hallucinations and fainting sprees and conversations with herself. As if her Goodie-Two-Shoes nature wasn't social suicide enough, she's also got to act like she just escaped from a hospital (not saying what kind). She's not related to Lucy at all because her aunt remarried and then her husband died so the aunt was stuck with this Rebel Without A Cause of a step-daughter who seems to exist only to cause Lucy strife. She does rebel-y things like sneaking out of the house, wearing slutty designer clothes, meeting boys, and running away from home to New Orleans. Ooh. How bad. But because this is a book for Impressionable Young Girls she thinks that people who do drugs and drink are stupid and below even HER (gasp). (And yet running away from home with strange men is PERFECTLY ok . . .)But something is watching Lucy and Angela. Something that isn't human. He can move fast, faster than a glance. He can appear in dreams. He is intangible, unless he doesn't want to be. He loves the taste of blood — especially Lucy's. He has killed, and he will kill again.Unless Lucy can stop him.My God, this book was SO CREEPY. The “evil man” is just realistic enough that you find yourself jumping at shadows after reading this book. Especially if you've just watched Paranormal Activity. (OMG. Getting goosebumps right now just thinking about that. Somebody is going to be having nightmares tonight.) I'm not sure what exactly he is . . . vampire? Incubus? (I'm leaning towards this one, personally,) Demon? Malevolent ghost? I WAS SO FREAKING PEEVED that there was a CLIFFHANGER at the end of this book. I was looking at the page numbers thinking, “How is she going to wrap this up? The book's going to be over soon . . . this isn't going to be one of those books that ends with a — OH NO SHE DIDN'T!!!!!!”But what makes this book even creepier is that the evil man is kind of sexy in his own way. You can see why he is good at the things he does. It's the same reason Christine has that morbid fascination with the Phantom of the Opera — there's something about that power and danger that is almost . . . attractive? It's weird because there are points where I thought that the evil man kind of had the hots for Lucy. But then there were also parts where I was like, Nope, he's back to acting out that Talking Heads song (you know the one). In fact, ALL the male characters in this book are REALLY stalkery. There's priests who appear out of nowhere and stare at you menacingly as you drive off in the distance, hot goth boys that tend to pop up around you when you least expect it, especially in graveyards and other spooky places, and give frustratingly vague clues, and creepy invisible men who blindfold you and then kiss you. What's with that? This book was a little trite but it was well-written and suspenseful and I could NOT put it down. Definitely a must-read for anyone who enjoys pre-Twilight paranormal/horror romances, especially ones written by Christopher Pike, L.J. Smith, and R.L. Stine. Even though it was written in 2003, the book has this total early 90's vibe that made me feel all nostalgic for the trashy Fear Street novels I devoured by the pageful at my middle school library. I'll definitely be reading the sequels if I can get my grubby little paws on them.
For a book that I grabbed at random of a library shelf because I just needed SOMETHING to read, I actually wasn't disappointed by what this book had to offer. The book wasn't anything amazing by any means, but it was a fun, quick read. The short chapters made it easy to get a chapter in here or their in between my classes instead of having to force myself to find a stopping point in the middle of the chapter's action and close it.In terms of the character development, I understand when the other people reviewing this novel say the character's are relatively flat, and I have to agree. Aside from Lucy, the characters are even not in the plot line enough to show any development, or they're taken out of the book entirely just when they're starting to show any development. On top of this, there truly isn't that many characters to this book that stick around long enough to be noted. We only really have Lucy, her cousin (Angela), her aunt (Irene), a classmate named Byron, and the Big Bad to keep the plot line going.The plot was also pretty cut and paste at points though. Girl ends up where she shouldn't be, comes across something, is confused and now chased after by villain. Pretty straightforward.The author managed to make it work to where I wasn't bored though. She tried to give twists in the plot to surprise the reader, and while some were cliche and easy to guess, some actually surprised me, as I did not see them coming.Also, while the author does drag on with her descriptions at times, making the reader want to tell her to just move on already, and Lucy may constantly bring up her mother or the novel's opening scene over and over again, to the annoyance of the reader, the author makes up for it in the scenes that are intended to make the reader uncomfortable or carry the feel of a paranormal or horror novel.Some of the best chapters in the book come from the Big Bad of all people. The chapters do a decent job at showing just how creepy the person can get and work at unsettling the reader.The ending was also frustrating but wanted me to keep going, the way it ended on a complete cliffhanger, with no ends tied or questions answered.Bonus points to this book for not having the same cliche love triangle we see in other big named novels at the momentSo in short, while the characters were pretty 2-D and plot wasn't amazing, the book was still a really fun quick-read and can keep the reader on the edge of their seat. I will definitely be grabbing the second book soon to continue the story.
What do You think about It Begins (2005)?
The Unseen is one of the best books i have read this year. There are four books in the series and i cant wait to read the second one. I like scary, horror, mystery books so if you like that kind of books i recommend reading this book. The book is never boring at any moment so you wont ever want to put it down! What i learned from this book is that the saying careful what you wish for is accualy true. Having supernatural powers isnt always such a joy. I gave this book five stars because it was just a good book to read, it kept my interested and thats what i like. i really recommend reading this book if you like horror books.
—Lindsey A
Actually I've read one of these books, really liked the creepy factor (funny I was at an age where I really disliked anything horror/thriller like and yet...) and the story, only I can't remember which one of it is (and seeing at the time I just picked it up because it sounded good, I didn't realise til halfway through that it wasn't the first book--I think) so I think I'll actually read this series again, right from the start.Not the world's best novel. Not bad, but could have been better. It's very short and brief and lots of things happen. Though predominantly, Lucy is very paranoid and scared most of the time.Ends on a cliffhanger.I did get a wave of creepiness at one stage, but overall this is not a really creepy novel. Well. Not yet :P.
—Nina {ᴡᴏʀᴅs ᴀɴᴅ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ}
It's a pretty good, kinda scary book. It's really for older teens, I think, since it's a little more mature. I read the version where books 1 and 2 are combined together, and I had no idea there are more books after this. These books don't have endings. The second book ends in conversation; The character asks her "who are you?" and then the book ends. Therefore, you MUST have the next book in your hands.It does seem, however, that not a whole lot happens in the books, other than many repeated kind of scenes like where the main character is scared being alone in her house, or she sees shadows or hears something. It takes a while for things to be explained. After two books, I still am not sure exactly who this guy is that's after her, or what he is. But I found the story enjoyable, and I read them in a matter of about 3 days.I would like to read the rest of the series if I can find them.
—Tia
