Review: Blackbird by Anna Carey
Publication Date: September 16th 2014
I’d heard lots of good things about Anna Carey and her Eve trilogy and while I’ve never gotten around to reading that series, Blackbird caught my eye right away. The cover is really dark and mysterious. The synopsis says “twisty, breathless cat-and-mouse thrill ride” which is perfect for me. I love thrillers and science fiction so this book sounded great for me. I was so excited! Unfortunately, this book ended up being a let down.
Blackbird is about a girl who wakes up in the middle of train tracks and has no idea how she got there or who she is. She has a strange tattoo on her wrist and people are trying to capture her.
What I failed to see in my excitement for this book is that it’s written in second person. I’ve never read a book in second person narrative before so it was complete shock for me. I was so confused by it and I was hoping that just the first chapter was going to be in second person. But no, it’s the whole book. And because of the narrative, I was never able to get into this book. I tried to get past it but I just couldn’t. It was confusing and made it really hard to visualize the story.
The book is marketed as “The Maze Runner series meets Code Name Verity”. I haven’t read Code Name Verity but I couldn’t find any resemblance to The Maze Runner. Blackbird did remind me a little bit of Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon, which I love.
The plot was pretty fast paced but at times it was so fast, that I couldn’t get a hold on that was going on before something else would happen. And because it’s written in second person, I ended up just being confused.
Overall, I just couldn’t get into this book. The second person narrative wasn’t working at all for me and the whole book pasted by in a dazed because I couldn’t visualize much of anything. I couldn’t get a hold on the characters either because of the narrative. At times I felt like I could get used to the writing style but it just fell flat. I might try to read this again in a year or two but right now, I just can’t see myself loving this book.
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