Book Stop Corner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” 





Kiki Sullivan, an American author, has penned a thrilling as well as an enchanting YA tale of magic, friendships, love and lots of herbs and sexy dolls, The Dolls which happens to be the first book in The Dolls series, where a group of friends with strange magical powers (harnessed from various weird kind of herbs) try to protect their town from external attacks like soldiers trying to drive a sharp knife through the hearts of those girls, that's the bottom line of this book.




Synopsis:

Eveny Cheval just moved back to Louisiana after spending her childhood in New York with her aunt Bea. Eveny hasn’t seen her hometown since her mother’s suicide fourteen years ago, and her memories couldn’t have prepared her for what she encounters. Because pristine, perfectly manicured Carrefour has a dark side full of intrigue, betrayal, and lies—and Eveny quickly finds herself at the center of it all.

Enter Peregrine Marceau, Chloe St. Pierre, and their group of rich, sexy friends known as the Dolls. From sipping champagne at lunch to hooking up with the hottest boys, Peregrine and Chloe have everything—including an explanation for what’s going on in Carrefour. And Eveny doesn’t trust them one bit.

But after murder strikes and Eveny discovers that everything she believes about herself, her family, and her life is a lie, she must turn to the Dolls for answers. Something’s wrong in paradise, and it’s up to Eveny, Chloe, and Peregrine to save Carrefour and make it right.

Eveny and her Aunt Bea moves back to their old town, Carrefour in Louisiana from New York, right before Eveny's seventeenth birthday. This is the town where Eveny's mother committed suicide when she was three years old. Left abandoned by her own father, Aunt Bea tool her in and raised her like her own. As soon as they reach they weird, dark town, Eveny started to get these strange nightmares where she regularly saw an old cemetery with lots of blood. Soon she becomes a part of two perfectly and impossibly gorgeous and manipulative bitches of her new private school which smells like money. Next thing we know is that Eveny is saying weird charms and putting on some strange lip gloss to find a killer whereas the whole objective was to protect the town and to find the soldier who was tracking Eveny.

Well, from the synopsis, the book sounds like something very cool and enticing to read about, unfortunately once you're into the story, you feel like how sooner you can pull yourself away from it. Although, I kept on reading because of the author's narrative style and writing style which are both quite articulate and evocative as well as engaging enough to make me turn the pages of the book till the very end.

Well, I understand and I agree with other reviewers that the story building is not at all the strongest aspect in the book, moreover there's no logic to the occurrence of events in and around Eveny's life, and mostly it felt, like the author is in a rush to pour in one mishap and un-fateful event after another into Eveny's life, without any question or strong validation.

The character graphing is also not the strongest feature in the book, since the characters felt very unreal and vague with their demeanor. A pretty girl using charms to wrap all the boys around her, a dark-haired girl using charms to make her legs look longer or boobs looking bigger, a kind girl who impulsively and without any curiosity falls into the pattern of the new life. It was really hard to believe that a teenager moving cross country with her aunt to a new town is not subjected to any kind of problems or issues on the first day of her school, she easily got blend in, although she lived there ages ago with most of the memories wiped out by spells and charms, strange

Then there is a guy who wants to protect Eveny from all evils but is trying hard to run away from responsibility and he gets back his wish, still he wants that responsibility back even though he is quite loud about expressing his distaste about this responsibility. Anyhow, the characters lacked depth although I liked Eveny quite a bit because of her selfless heart.

The town that the author tried to feature is awesome and thoroughly evil, dark and gothic. She has included every kind of elements to make the setting of the book scarier and eerie with intricate descriptions about the background that the author have vividly captured with her prose. Yes, that's one strong quality of this book which kept me moving forward till the very end. There is in fact a quite a lot of mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat and the way she have unraveled the mystery with some brain twisting events and turns made me anticipate till the very end.

Anyhow, if you want to experience, sex and the city with a gothic version, then go for this book.

Verdict: Not that promising yet intriguing enough to go on till the very last page, and since the book doesn't end with a major cliffhanger, I'm not too enthusiastic about the next book in this series.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Kiki Sullivan, for giving me an opportunity to read this book, in return for an honest review. 
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Author Info:
Kiki Sullivan is the author of The Dolls series. Like the main character Eveny Cheval, Kiki used to live in New York and now calls the American South home. Unlike Eveny, she finds it impossible to keep her rose garden alive and has been singlehandedly responsible for the unfortunate demise of countless herbs. She may or may not have hung out with queens of the dark arts, strolled through creepy New Orleans cemeteries at night, or written the first book of this series with a red-headed Louisiana voodoo doll beside her computer.  
Visit her here 


Book Purchase Links:

• Amazon US 
• Amazon India