Review: Exciting, but underdeveloped
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 19, 2013
This book was really...weird. I didn't dislike it. But I also don't think that I would go so far as to say that I loved it, either. Going into this book, I thought that it was going to be one of those recently popular fairytale retellings (of Cinderella), but while it does have some similar elements, that's really not what it is.Slumber by Tamara Blake is about a 17-year-old girl named Ruby, who lives with her mother and younger sister in a trailer park. When her mother falls ill, Ruby takes over for her at her job cleaning Cottingley Heights mansion, where she meets the mysterious and handsome Tam and a bunch of his rowdy drug- and sex-crazed friends, including a jealous ex-girlfriend. Ruby isn't interested in that kind of scene, but decides that she likes Tam enough to hang out with him...just not in the mansion.As her family situation gets bleaker and bleaker, Ruby realizes that she needs to rely on Tam's help more than she wants to. After visiting him at the mansion again, she realizes that there is more to his crowd of friends than meets the eye. There's something wrong with them. All they're interested in is partying, and they seem to take a sick joy in causing pain in others. But, man, do they make good coffee.I really, really liked Ruby's character. She was well developed, three-dimensional, and we learned a lot about who she is throughout the novel. My feelings about Tam were constantly going back and forth. His character's actions were very inconsistent, so I was confused about how I should feel about him. Is he Ruby's prince charming in disguise...or just a sexy jerk?I also wish that the second half of the book had been way more developed. It could've used 100 more pages in order to round out all of the exciting and important things that happen after she figures out Tam's secret. There was a lot of potential there, but it ended so quickly that I almost didn't have enough time to fully absorb and enjoy everything that went down.**Thanks to Netgalley and Diversion books for providing me this free advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.**