For eighteen year-old Gemma, life has never been normal.
Up until recently, she has been incapable of feeling emotion. And when she’s around Alex, the gorgeous new guy at school, she can feel electricity that makes her skin buzz.
Not to mention the monsters that haunt her nightmares have crossed over into real-life.
But with Alex seeming to hate her and secrets popping up everywhere, Gemma’s life is turning into a chaotic mess. Things that shouldn’t be real suddenly seem to exist.
And as her world falls apart, figuring out the secrets of her past becomes a matter of life and death.
My first, personalized “authorgraph”, thank you Jessica Sorensen!
Book Details:
What’s It About?
Gemma feels invisible in high school, and doesn’t have any friends. When forced to work in a group for an astronomy project, Gemma gets the notion that her partner Alex, hates her. She overhears her partners Alex and Aislin discussing about her and a “prophecy”, behind her back. Something was going on, and Gemma needed to find out…
To add to her stress, she has been experiencing reoccurring nightmares about monsters with yellow eyes chasing her in the woods. She can’t shake the feeling that her nightmares are coming true. What Gemma is about to find out, is that the monsters in her dreams are real, and the boy that she believes hates her is her biggest ally…
“I had to save myself in order to save the world.”
My Thoughts
I wanted to mention before I begin, that I liked Gemma, the girl with the violet eyes who lacked the ability to feel emotion, and longed to be up with the stars. Systematically isolated, courtesy of her grandparents who she called by their first names, who could blame her for wanting to be anywhere else?
The Fallen Star begins relatively believable, with a young high school loner, being forced into a group astronomy assignment. Her partner takes her into the woods, to reveal an ashy spot where according to legend, a star fell 20 years ago. This is when the fantasy elements set it, because after she visits this spot, she is confronted by monsters, forseers, witches, and even a vampire! NOTHING is as it seems, and Gemma is responsible for the future of mankind.
Here are my thoughts; why include all of the additional paranormal/supernatural details when the star angle/legend, and how it related to Gemma, was so fascinating? The addition of foresight, teleportation, witches, and the vampire was distracting, and took away from, what I assume, was the original plot. It was just too much.
All too often there is a love triangle featured in a YA novel, and Laylen the vampire was competing with Alex for Gemma’s attention, so I was just waiting for it. The story ended with one heck of a cliffhanger, but I do not plan to read the next installment because I can’t imagine which way the story could possibly go next, since it changed so much within book 1. I basically just read 400+ pages of a plot that spun out of control! And that is unfortunate, because it began with so much promise, and I truly did like the main character.
Three out of Five Stars
Book provided in exchange for an honest, thoughtful, and fair book review.
*** I would like to mention that out of nearly 2100 reviews, this novel has an average rating of 4.5 stars out of 5.
Purchase
This book is FREE on Amazon. Grab your copy, here!
About The Author
Jessica Sorensen is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author from the snowy mountains of Wyoming. When she’s not writing, she spends her time reading and hanging out with her family.
You can find more information about Jessica and her books at http://www.jessicasorensen.com
A Well Read Woman 
Great review. I actually really enjoyed this series, been a few years since I read it, but I found it exciting and didn’t find the love triangle off putting. Shame you didn’t really like it.
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Yes, it did get a lot of positive reviews, but unfortunately, not from me! 🙂
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Interesting review, April. It does sound a bit like the author has thrown everything into the mix when she didn’t need to as she already had a strong story. Also, I sigh sometimes at the number of series around. Does no one write one stand-alone book any more? Sometimes a series works really well and it’s great to get to know the characters over several books but I’m too old to get locked into reading several books in a series when there are so many other books out there. Can you tell I’m in a bit of a snit tonight?
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LOL @ “bit of a snit”!!!! Haven’t heard that expression before but I MUST adapt it! I agree, sometimes THE NEED for a novel to become a series drives me crazy… especially when they end with a cliffhanger!
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