Review: Different from the first
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 29, 2012
(cross-posted from the blog Wading Through Electronic Ink)Something that I have noticed about a lot of YA paranormal romance novel series: the second book is a lot different from the first. The series generally start with ordinary teens with regular high school drama who have no idea that their lives are about to take a turn for the bizarre. So we see their ordinary lives and watch as they slowly puzzle out the strange things that happen to them. Why did I dream about this boy before I met him? Isn't it odd that his sister reads tarot cards? And who are the creepy people following me around town?Then by the end of book 1, the characters are faced with the truth of the situation - The world is not as they thought it was and they are all in horrible danger. This usually culminates in a violent and dramatic first book ending climax in which our characters make it through alive but with more than a little post-traumatic stress. So then we are into the second book where the characters are constantly under threat of death and their attention is no longer focused on trivialities like moody friends and arguing parents.The above description is exactly what happens in Verity and Clarity. And it's not that Clarity is a bad book, but it is a very different book from Verity. In the first book, the major conflicts were Perdy's oppressive home life and her friend Tammie's attention-seeking behavior. Perdita's home life is still a (lesser) factor in Clarity, but Tammie hardly makes an appearance at all. A large part of the story - it might even be more than half- is told from Nathan's point of view as he deals with werewolf politics, and the rest is Perdita being worried about her father and lamenting that she doesn't know how to be normal anymore. Nathan's sister Amelia is barely even a presence in the book, though apparently the novella Adversity is about what is going on with her. (Which is good because her problems were clearly plot-relevant.)So, the moral is, Clarity is still a good book. But if you're expecting it to be just like Verity, you might be disappointed.