Review: Okay, but missing something for me
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2012
(Source: Downloaded for free from Amazon)17-year-old Aralia LeRue lives in New Orleans. Raised by her grandmother, she has a part African-American background, and can hear and speak to spirits - which she thinks is normal-ish for New Orleans.Arelia's grand-mere's landlord keeps putting the rent up, and Arelia's best friend Sabrina has secured both herself and Aurelia summer jobs at the LePlant family Plantation, so Arelia is off to spend the summer working in an attempt to earn some much needed cash.What Arelia gets when she reaches the Darkwood Plantation is a lot more than she bargained for though, when it turns out that the cook is actually her Grand-mere's sister! All is revealed, and as it turns out her great-great aunt performed some ritual on Arelia when she was a baby, she was blessed by some spirit, and that is why she can communicate with spirits the way she can, not to mention that fact that she is the youngest in a long line of Voodoo Queens!Arelia isn't sure whether she should learn more about Voodoo or not, but she has plenty of other things to keep her occupied as her best friend starts throwing herself at Lucas - the youngest of the Le Plane family, while Lucas is showering his attention on Arelia. This causes big problems between Arelia and Sabrina.Should Arelia learn more about Voodoo and her heritage? What is Lucas' secret? Will Arelia and Sabrina's friendship survive the summer?This book was okay. It was well written and had some promising ideas and storyline, the only problem was that I just didn't know where the story was going a lot of the time. Then, when the storyline was revealed it wasn't something that I would have guessed at, but at the same time I wasn't particularly surprised or amazed. It just fell a little flat for me, and by about half-way through I was unfortunately beginning to lose interest.That being said, the book wasn't bad, it just didn't do it for me. What annoyed me about the book though was the non-end. The book finished, but the story didn't. I thought this was a series, but it's actually more like `Bound' is the first half of the story, and `Punished' is the second half. Unfortunately as much as I hate not knowing how a story ends, I'm not interested enough to buy and read the second book.Overall, a well written YA book, with an interesting storyline, just missing something for me.6 out of 10.(Book Length: 3630 kindle locations)