Review: A very intriguing start to this serial!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 18, 2014
Run to You is a serial novel consisting of three parts released a week apart, each one delving us deeper into the life of Tessa and her family as they try to stay one step ahead of a hired assassin. A serial novel is somewhat of a unique and different reading experience, forcing us to examine the story in sections rather than as a whole, something that can be a bit tricky given an element or two that may bother us in the first installment could very well be remedied in the second–therefore becoming an irrelevant complaint overall–but because we approach each piece of this puzzle individually we’re left with our emotions a bit more in flux.That being said, Run to You has us quite literally hitting the ground running, immediately caught up in Tessa’s terror over being discovered yet again. We as readers are the eye of a turbulent storm as it roars around us, Tessa and her family a whirl of movement of emotion as we sit quietly and try to make sense of the various pieces as they blow by us. Ms. Kensie teases us with fleeting glimpses of how Tessa and her family came to be in their current situation, showing us just enough to ensure our she has our attention and then quickly redirecting us before we can ask more questions than she’s prepared to answer in this first part.Though we more than sympathize with Tessa and can’t fathom the fear she and her family live with day in and day out, as of this first installment the story seems to be more heavily plot-driven than character-driven, our emotional ties to them overshadowed by our immense curiosity as to what exactly happened that day eight years ago that started it all. There’s a romance between Tessa and a young man from her new school, and while a declaration of love seems to come far too early in their relationship, the fact that Tessa is keeping so much from him holds us captivated, wondering when the impressive dam holding her secrets back is going to crack and allow a few to slip through.All in all, Run to You gets off to an intriguing start, light just barely beginning to shine on the complexities–personal and familial as well as normal and paranormal–to make a sometimes painful tangle of Tessa’s life, but there is clearly many a shadowed corner that remains as of yet untouched in this first installment, and I for one can’t wait to see how things develop.Rating: 3.5/5