Reading to Unwind: {Blog Tour} Snowed - Maria Alexander (Review & Giveaway)

Title: Snowed

By: Maria Alexander

Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Release Date: November 2, 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Fantasy, Horror
My Rating: 3/5

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Synopsis:

Charity Jones is a 16-year-old engineering genius who’s much-bullied for being biracial and a skeptic at her conservative school in Oak County, California. Everything changes when Charity’s social worker mother brings home a sweet teen runaway named Aidan to foster for the holidays. Matched in every way, Charity and Aidan quickly fall in love. But it seems he’s not the only new arrival: Charity soon finds the brutally slain corpse of her worst bully and she gets hard, haunting evidence that the killer is stalking Oak County. As she and her Skeptics Club investigate this death and others, they find at every turn the mystery only grows darker and more deadly. One thing’s for certain: there’s a bloody battle coming this holiday season that will change their lives – and human history – forever.

Review:

This book follows Charity Jones who is an engineering genius who is also a free thinker at a very conservative school. Charity is constantly bullied at her school for her belief system. She has a few close friends from engineering who stand by her side. The story has really two parts at first we are hunting for a beast and then we get a complete picture of what is going on after. I am going to try really hard and not give any spoilers in my review, it will be challenging since the book takes a lot of turns.

The book is very fast paced in my mind when reading. There were portions that I didn't want to stop reading and needed to know what was going to happen and also points where I needed to stop and think about things. The author did a great job with all of the details in the book it was easy to follow along with.

Charity was a very interesting character in the book. The author did a great job creating a larger personality for her. Charity really grows a lot during this book from the beginning to the end. Charity comes off as a strong person in the book and she really grows even stronger throughout the book. She endures all of the bullying and comes out prosperous.

Things I didn't love in the book I guess was the storyline. The story was building up to who Aidan was for a long time in the book. There was a lot of action going on during the build up and then when it happened I just couldn't believe that is where the story went. I just had so many emotions invested when we learn about Aidan I was almost completely turned off from the book. I just felt like there are some things that are really had to fictionalize and bring into the fantasy world and this was one of them for me personally. It felt like to many real details where part of the build up and also the harm done to Aidan was to well described for me.

Also, Charity has a brother named Charles who is a complete psychopath in the book. I felt like they didn't really touch on him enough. I mean he took a big leap I felt from going from some bullying to what he did. There had to be a lot more going on with him before the book and we didn't really get that information so I felt like it took to big of a leap here and it was another hard point for me to accept.

The Aidan and Charity relationship to wasn't my favorite thing in the book. It felt sort of rushed and they really didn't know much about he each and then they were in love. I needed more of a build up on this relationship to see it happen.

I would probably read the next book in the series because the author did a great job setting up the second book in the ending. I feel like I would want to know what was going to happen to the characters.

I would suggest this as a nighttime read. There were natural stopping points in the book as well as points where the action picked up and you just wanted to keep reading. This book will definitely take your mind off of your day.

I received a copy of this book from The Fantastic Flying Book Club for the purpose of providing on honest review. This does not effect my opinion of this book.

Maria Alexander is a produced screenwriter, games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, fiction writer, and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as acclaimed anthologies with legends such as Clive Barker, David Morrell and Heather Graham.

Her debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Publisher’s Weekly called is, “(a) splendid, bittersweet ode to the ghosts of childhood,” while Library Journal hailed it in a Starred Review as “a horror novel to anticipate.” She’s represented by Alex Slater at Trident Media Group.

When she’s not wielding a katana at her local shinkendo dojo, she’s being outrageously spooky or writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats, a pervasive sense of doom, and a purse called Trog.

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