Review: The Wanderers by Jessica Miller

Summary

What do you do when you learn your family is the one who's holding all the secrets? Secrets that could get you killed...

Ella is looking forward to starting college in the fall with her best friend Josie. She’s looking for a place where she can get away from her overbearing parents and two older annoying brothers. Unfortunately Ella realizes that sometimes the past comes back to haunt you.

Ella soon learns that the man who terrorizes her dreams is in fact real and coming after her.

When one of her classmates is murdered, Ella slowly recognizes this is not some strange coincidence. Ella fears that the boy she’s falling in love with is the one who stalks her dreams and no longer knows who she can trust.

When she finally learns the truth of her family's deepest secret, Ella has to face her demons by taking out one of the people she thought she could trust…before they kill her.

Rating

Review

I was truly surprised with The Wanderers. The author really keeps all of the secrets off of the blurb on the back of the book. You pick up this book thinking it's about one thing and BOOM! It's not. Now don't take that the wrong way. It's nice to be honestly surprised sometimes when reading. All too often, the blurb will give away too many surprises ... which is why I only read the summary of a book only once - just to see if it's interesting and then I'll put the book down until I forget what it's about. I know, weird. Anyway ... in the beginning, I was really entertained with The Wanderers. The author seems to have channeled what it is like to be a teenager and in that awkward phase of your life, with all of the pressures and influences that you're surrounded with. The plot is really mysterious and you just can't put a finger on what exactly is going on. Good stuff. 

I found the main character, Ella, to be endearing and sweet but then she would have the bursts of petulant immaturity which were a bit annoying but I'm assuming that it was put in to make her seem like a teenager? I don't know. It felt like it was almost on the verge of being a full blown temper tantrum and if that had happened, I would have just put the book down. I'm not really interested in reading about spoiled kids who throw tantrums. It didn't come to that, thank goodness. A bit into the book, Ella became self-righteous and she started scolding people ... I don't know. Is it that big of a deal? No. But it bothered me enough during the story to make me write a note about it so I figured it was worth mentioning. For the most part, the characters were really well written. I enjoyed the interactions between them and actually looked forward to the next scenes just to see what they would say to each other.

While the mystery surrounding the plot was intriguing during the beginning, about halfway through, I found it really tiresome. I just wanted to throw my own tantrum because I wanted it to get to the point. Dragging out the mystery is great ... until it's too long. Hell, I'm not an author. I can't imagine all of the hard work that goes into writing a novel but I am a reader and I know what I like. I like mystery but not too much because it becomes boring and I'll put the novel down. Which is what happened this time. I needed a breather to see if maybe I was just impatient and not wanting to fully invest ... which I didn't think was the case because I really like the story. I like the meat of The Wanderers and even after the few issues that I had, I still enjoyed it and I'll probably pick up the next installment. 

Probably. But I'm a little torn. There were just some grammar issues that made me want to scream and I hope that the your/you're and then/than issues are resolved in the next novel. Basically, pick it up. It's a good paranormal novel and it will keep you entertained and wishing for more when you get to the end. I'm pretty curious as to how this plays out next ...

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