Arcadia Awakens, with its unusual plot and rich setting, promised to be a bit more creative than a lot of the paranormal YA circulating at the moment. In the end, however, it didn’t quite work for me.
I found the writing quite clunky. Whether it’s Meyer’s style of writing or a consequence of the translation I don’t know, (Arcadia Awakens was originally written in German), but sentences didn’t flow as well as they could have and the dialogue felt stilted and awkward. I also didn’t feel the characters reacted convincingly to the often bizarre things that were going on around them. And while I love Greek mythology, the whole snake/cat romance just didn’t work for me here. A shame, as I could have really gotten into a Romeo and Juliet-type romance with a mafia setting and some shapeshifters thrown in.
Many thanks to Templar for providing a copy for review.