First Published: 2010
Paperback
Young Adult, Fantasy
Rating:
When Wendy Everly was six years old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. Eleven years later, Wendy discovers her mother might have been right. She’s not the person she’s always believed herself to be, and her whole life begins to unravel—all because of Finn Holmes.Switched is a book I'd rather forget I've ever read, and there aren't many books I'd say that about. It was so bad that to this day I can rant about it as if I've just read it yesterday, and I've been too afraid to pick up another Hocking book since.
Finn is a mysterious guy who always seems to be watching her. Every encounter leaves her deeply shaken…though it has more to do with her fierce attraction to him than she’d ever admit. But it isn’t long before he reveals the truth: Wendy is a changeling who was switched at birth—and he’s come to take her home.
Now Wendy’s about to journey to a magical world she never knew existed, one that’s both beautiful and frightening. And where she must leave her old life behind to discover who she’s meant to become…
I got this book because of the cover. I was struck with how beautiful it was, saw the summery was up my alley and my friends liked it, so it became an instant buy. But yeah, mostly cause it's supper beautiful. #Shallow
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| Tay-Tay knows her stuff... |
And now, into the long version (what, did you think I was going to leave it at that? pffft).
First of all, Hocking's trolls are hella disappointing. Trolls are not the everyday literature heroes, and I was excited for that. But guess what? they are the farthest thing away from the big, ugly, menacing boulders of rock we're accustomed to. In fact, they just look like supermodel humans! So, not that different from everyday literary creatures...
Speaking of Trolls - Wendy is one. She's our main character, and under different circumstances (i.e were she an interesting, compelling MC), I could've ignored the aforementioned point. But no. While she started out alright, she completely lost me when she started obsessing over Finn. And I mean, really obsessing. Her only redeeming quality was how she managed to make me laugh occasionally.
Speaking of the devil... it's not often that I outright dislike a main male character. But I really did with this one, even when he was "playing nice". And frankly, he mostly wasn't. Mostly, he was a class A jerk, or he was distant. At the end, I never got what Wendy saw in the dude.
But I'll be honest, I liked almost all the supporting characters. If this trilogy was about them, I'll probably be gulping it up. Like, Tove or Rhys's stories will be fan. Or even Matt's!
Now we're moving to the REAL THING. I'm putting here the general gist of things, but if you want to see a play by play, detailed rant of the whole "romance" thing, come back to PART TWO tomorrow.
Now, okay. Oh. My. Fucking. Tripping. God. WHY?
The romance in this book made me want to kill myself. Scratch that, kill Wendy. I just wanted it to end already! It was so insta love I can't even!
The "love" in this story, if you can really call it that, completely overshadowed and overpowered the plot, to the point where I felt there wasn't much of the latter. Thankfully, it eased up a bit after 100 pages, otherwise this would have been a DNF for sure.
Side note: I did enjoy their first kiss. Maybe it was because some plot has finally been dished out and diluted the romance a bit, but I'm not complaining. About this, anyways lol
Another thing I'm not complaining about is the ending, because I kind of liked it. I truly believe that if this story took a different turn (i.e: erasing the god-awful romance and focusing on the actual story), I would've liked it. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
P.S - someone, please tell me, do people really say "foxy" nowadays? Is this still a thing??
