Friday 21 October 2016

Review on Nirvana #3 Blinded


When Adele Blackburn's mother dies, she is forced to move away from New York, and start a new life with her grandparents in a commune.Addie soon adapts to her new life, and after spending her whole life in a state of poverty, she is delighted by her wealthy grandparents. However, Addie is constantly thinking about why her mother would run away from such a lovely home to live in the city, and she is determined to find out.

As I loved the first two books in the Nirvana series, I was looking forward to reading this one! Although Blinded is the third book in the series, it is actually a prequel to the first two. I was initially a little disappointed when I realised this, as I adored the characters from the first two books, and was hoping the story would return to them. However, I was excited that this book was going to explain how Nirvana, the commune from the first two books, began.

Blinded follows Addie Blackburn, a thirteen year old girl from Bright Lights City. Addie has never met her grandparents, so when her mothers dies and she is forced to move in with them, she has no idea what to expect. Addie has grown up poor, living in a tiny apartment her whole life, so I loved her sense of bewilderment at finding out that her grandparents live in a mansion. Addie is determined to find out why her mother would leave such luxury behind, which leads her to asking her grandmother about it.

I loved the different point of views that switched between Addie and her grandmother, Margaret. As Addie tells us about her life, Margaret tells Addie about her own childhood. I preferred reading Margaret's chapters at first, as Addie's life seemed a little mundane for the first half of the book. I also felt as if the editing was a little messy in Margaret's chapters. Although it was obvious that most of her chapters were purely dialogue,the quotation marks were constantly being opened and closed, which confused me multiple times and lead me to believe that a character inside of Margaret's narration was speaking. Although I am no editor, I felt as if quotations should have only been used when she started the narration, and when she finished.

I found the first half of the book to be a little slow and was even a little bored. A large portion of the first half of the book focuses on boys, wit both Addie and her grandmother experiencing instalove when they are very young. Instalove makes me cringe at the best of times, and although I realise this book is set in the 1800's where girls would marry young, I felt that it was a little too much. Although it was interesting to discover how Addie's grandparents met, I found it a little cringy how Addie seemingly fell in love with Lucas at first sight. I felt as if Addie had bigger problems than boys, and I was much more interested in her grandfather's work and finding out why her mother left.

The second half of the book was a lot more interesting, and I was anticipating how Margaret's story would end. I loved how the plot ended up resembling a mystery novel, and I was eager to find out who Addie's father was. I was a little disappointed that Addie correctly guessed who her father was early on in the book. However, there were still enough unexpected plot twists to keep me happy.

The reason behind why Addie's mother left was extremely shocking, and I was not expecting such a serious topic to come up in this book. As Addie is thirteen, I presumed that the target audience for this book would be young teenagers, so it took me completely by surprise when such an upsetting and triggering topic came up towards the end of the book. Although this book initially seemed more light hearted than the previous two, the last few chapters made me change my mind. 

The thing I was most excited to find out about was the origins of the eye colour surgeries, as I figured there would be a purpose behind them other than for purely cosmetic reasons. I was disappointed when this wasn't the case, and I was just as confused as Addie as to why her grandfather continue to perform the surgeries despite the complications that could arise. As the surgeries are optional at this point, it made me wonder what changed to make them mandatory in the first two books.

Although I did enjoy this book, I have to say that I preferred the first two books in the series. I loved the fast pace of the other books, and they kept me interested from the start. I also loved how the previous books didn't focus too much on romance, and there was no instalove. Unfortunately this book failed to create much suspense, and I think it was definitely the weakest in the series.

Blinded is now available to purchase!



1 comment:

  1. Thanks so much for the thoughtful and insightful review, Rachel! I really appreciate it! If you'd like to leave an Amazon and/or Goodreads review, that would be great! Thanks again :)

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