Review: Review for Cloud Nine
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 4, 2013
2.5/5 starsCloud Nine is a story a seventeen year old girl, Claire, who meets a "guardian" one morning. The guardian, Sterling, is there to help this self-sufficient teenager, and they end up falling in love. However, their love does not go as smoothly with prior romances surfacing and putting a strain on their relationship.The story is written in first person following Claire and Sterling. Claire is seventeen and considered to be a self-sufficient teenager because her parents are hardly ever home. Her prior boyfriend from months ago, Josh, dumped her, causing some trust issues with any new romantic relationships. Sterling is a guardian that has been working for around one thousand years (I can't remember the exact century given.) When he first sees Claire, he falls instantly in love and makes Claire his charge. Eventually they fall in love. Although the characters are fine in their own way, I find some discrepancies with them. Considering that at the beginning of the story Claire's parents are supposed to be working a lot and out of the picture - causing her to be self-sufficient, the reader sees a lot of them in the book and their concern about her new budding relationship. As for Sterling's friends/relations, things mentioned at the beginning didn't quite add up for me later on. For example, Sterling admits that Claire is making him do a lot "firsts" such as appear human. My thinking is: if he doesn't appear as human until now, why would he have need of a house-even simply furnished? Just to feel connected? This didn't add up for me. It seems as like it was written for convenience.Within the plot, nothing much happens. There is a premise of a story--past relationships getting in the way, and the fact that Sterling and Claire is the first guardian/human combo to come about--but really nothing happens besides meeting the family and romance. I think if there was a little less kissing, blushing, and "You really love him/her, don't you?" there would be more room for a better developed plot. The ending is abrupt; nothing is really tied up. We go from after Thanksgiving break to Christmas time without much description of what happened. I would have liked to seen more explanation about the grandma and her "keen"ness on the whole relationship. Also, a better explanation as to what went on with Josh. One final note, this book contains a lot of grammatical errors. The errors are distracting throughout most of the book. There are misspelling (ex. within the first chapter - guardian "angle" not "angel"), punctuation (ex. No comma when using the person's name in the sentence "I am here to be of service to you Claire" not "to you,  Claire"), heterographic homophones (ex. "hear" and "here" mixed up), and the tense throughout the book switches from present to past tense.This book is written for young adults. It is a clean book - only kissing (lots of kissing actually.) I think with some editing it could be turned into a great story.