Review: Please Make It Stop.  I'm Begging You!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2012
I have a great idea for the ending to this series. I think that Logan should sail away from the island, meet a sweet girl on the mainland, head to college, plan a future . . . and the rest of the island and all those on it should slowly sink into the sea, sparing the rest of us from their rotten personalities and ridiculously mean-spirited drama. Erg! I have never felt so irritated with an entire book of characters as I am with this series. At this point in the series the people reading these books are either die-hard fans (notice all the five star ratings!) or people like me who continue to buy the books because we are suckers for finishing out the series we begin, no matter what. I have never loved this series, but I didn't really start hating things until book five. Unfortunately, the bad taste left in my mouth after that book is still lingering, so I'm afraid it affected my experience reading this book. I don't want to dislike these books. Behind all of the things I don't like it a potentially interesting, unique story. Unfortunately it is lost in this sea of melodrama that swirls and swirls and swirls all over the place, never actually taking us anywhere.I feel like all of my issues with this book are similar to my issues with book five, so I won't spend forever explaining everything all over again, but here are my main complaints:1. Skyla -- Is there any more annoying, whiny, witchy, mean-spirited, hateful first person narrator in literature? I can't imagine. I realize that she has a lot of problems that have been forced on her. She has a rotten family, a rotten set of "friends," a life that never stays stable from one minute to the next. I get it. But what has always made me love characters I read about in other books is when main characters face their problems with strength and integrity. What does Skyla do? She plans horrible revenges. She calls people names. She meanders from Boy #1 to Boy #2 to Boy #3, and sometime even Boy #4 without the least amount of guilt. She gripes and gripes and gripes about the situation she finds herself in. She approaches her problems by creating bigger problems and leaving others to clean up the mess.2. Skyla's family -- The drama of Skyla's family was highly irritating to read. Her step-father is horribly mentally abusive to her. Her mother is having an affair right under everyone's noses. Her younger sister and step-sister are behaving in ways that no thirteen year-old girls should be behaving. Her step-brother is the worst example of a baby-daddy in history. The constant fighting, bickering, belittling, etc. was maddening to read. What horrible people! Was I supposed to feel sorry for Skyla after reading about them? I don't know.  She was just as bad as them half the time. Ugh!3. The students at Skyla's high school. I'm sure there must have been some well-behaved students with an ounce of integrity in this school. Surely there had to be. But they did not exist at all in this novel. The students were selfish, involved in often illegal, and usually irresponsible behavior. Where were the adults supervising this island? Was I supposed to look up to any of these people. They were all a mess.4. The "bad guys." Chloe was awful. Absolutely awful! So that makes her the perfect bad guy, right? No. I have no interest in reading about characters that are pure evil. In my opinion the characteristics that make up a good villain are enough normality to make them layered. I like to read about exactly what makes them tick, and I am interested in them as characters when they seem a bit normal at times. In some ways that makes them scarier. Chloe was just so bad that she ended up being boring to me. I knew that when she showed up something awful was going to happen to Skyla. It was so predictable. It seems like if she was that predictably evil it would make sense for Skyla to avoid her. But no. She just constantly ended up doing things in her vicinity. Why does Skyla continue to take part in the cheer squad when EVERY SINGLE other girl on this squad is hateful, vindictive, and dangerous in some way to her? Why? Either get an adult to stop the terrible behavior, or QUIT THE TEAM!!!5. The love triangle/square/pentagon. I have always liked Logan from the very beginning of this series. He seemed like he was the only person in this world with an ounce of maturity. Even when it seemed as if he might have been working for the other side, I never quite believed in his guilt. I could always feel the natural connection between Skyla and him. Of course, I have always believed that he could do MUCH better, but still, I guess I was rooting for this relationship to win out for this series. But there is Gage as well. I don't know what to think about the events of the ending of this book. I seriously do not quite understand what was going on there. Where does Gage stand in all this? I don't know. He has seemed to be another point of normality in these books, so that ending threw me a bit. But Skyla and Gage's relationship seemed so forced to me. Instead of feeling their connection I was forced to read about how "perfect" and "amazing" the relationship was over and over and over again. I couldn't make my own conclusions; I had to have the awesomeness of their couplehood pounded over my head constantly. I was so sick of hearing about how they were meant for each other -- even as her heart pined for Logan/Marshall/Ellis????? on the side. And the "engagement"? What the heck was that all about? These are seventeen year old kids! I realize that they are in a crazy sort of universe, but if my seventeen year old daughter came home and announced her engagement after popping from boyfriend to boyfriend on a weekly basis, I don't think I would have thrown an engagement party right away while squealing away with joy. I might have sat her down to have a discussion to see if this was really the wisest decision to make at such a volatile time in her life. But, whatever. And Marshall? I don't know. Sometimes he seemed okay. Sometimes he was horrible. Most of the time he was just plain creepy. I mean, he is her teacher! Yuck! And what was with her ponderings about what life might be like as Ellis's wife? That was out of left field. Overall, as I've said in other books in this series -- none of them deserve her. She is a romantic mess.6. The soap opera of a plot. If they made a soap opera with a paranormal twist, this would be it. Drama. Drama. Drama. Lots of fighting. Lots of crying. Lots of proclamations of undying love. Cliff hangers. It had it all. The one thing that drove me nuts was, like in other books in this series, a chapter would end with a major cliff hanger. Then I would quickly turn the page to often find this phrase to begin the next chapter: The next morning . . . Really? If you end a chapter with a huge plot twist you should have the courtesy to acknowledge that at the beginning of the next page. Instead I was constantly left in a state of confusion, and that got annoying after a bit.7. The lack of growth in ANYONE. Six books. Six freaking books! And Skyla is still mostly in the dark about her powers. The characters are still flailing around trying to determine their spot in this world. The same cat fights are taking place. The relationships are still completely dysfunctional. Nothing changes! Give me something to read for. At least give me a better understanding of what is going on in this world. I have bought and read six books and feel like I am just as clueless about this world as I was at the end of book one . . . only now I hate the characters a thousand times more because their stupidity is the only thing that seems to develop at all as the plot moves along.8. The overly done language of the book. There are some writers who do an amazing job describing the world they create in books. Maggie Stiefvater in The Wolves of Mercy Falls series or Julie Kagawa in the Iron Fey series come to my mind. They use beautiful language to wrap the scenes of a book around me as I read. In this book too often I was drawn out of the story because of the descriptions Moore used. It seemed as if she was trying too hard to create something beautiful with her language, and it came out as overdone or hokey at times. The images just didn't work for me.This book was waaaaaay too long. I don't mind reading long books. . . if they are good ones. But this book seemed to just go on and on and on, never really leading me anywhere. Ultimately I was waiting and waiting for Logan to find a way back to his body, and that kept me reading, but the reality was that I just felt as if I was still waiting for something to happen that would get this faction war under way. If I felt as if this book was a time for Skyla to train and prepare, to hone her skills, I could have lived with that. But she doesn't seem to be getting any more talented, smarter, or stronger. She just continues to exist, making mistake after mistake as more and more people are hurt or killed in her wake. It is time to get this series to the main event.  I've had enough of Skyla's whining about her rotten life. I am ready to see just how she and Logan are meant to end this war with a victory.Will I buy the next (hopefully last) book in this series? Yes. Even with my great disappointment in the last two books I have read, I still hold out hope that I will be pleasantly surprised with the ending of this series. They are ebook priced, so it isn't a terrible waste of money. I will just keep my fingers crossed that a resolution with arrive with book number seven.