Review:
Emily is just your average nerd. Happy to stay home on a Saturday night and watch her horror movies. Until one night she decides to start dressing up in her stepsister’s club clothes and goes out for a night on the town, becoming “Night Time” Emily. I know color me intrigued! Unfortunately Jeff Sampson does not deliver in his debut novel, Vesper.
Vesper is read as a transcript of Emily talking to an anonymous man on record about what has been happening to her. The book is actually what Emily wrote about all the events that she has undergone. Which I found totally interesting and a bit different. It was almost, a little, reminiscent of Maximum Ride by James Patterson. Unfortunately, Vesper was nothing like Maximum Ride and I was a bit disappointed.
Emily was an easy enough main character to relate to. She was very shy, meek, and geeky in an enduring kind of way. When she became “Night Time” Emily she was completely different, outgoing, skanky, and domineering. I actually liked this dichotomy of the human personality and thought it was fun and interesting, very Jekyll and Hyde. What I didn’t like was all the characters surrounding Emily. Her best friend, Maggie, was just annoying and too much of a nag. It felt like Emily just needed to get rid of Maggie because she was pulling her down! Her Sister would have been interesting if she was ever around, and the relationship Emily had with her Step Mother and Father was pretty much nonexistent.
I could have forgiven all of this is the action had been enough to drive the story. Sadly it was not. There is someone in town murdering kids like Emily and yet she just doesn’t seem to care, in fact she comes face to face with the killer and kind of shrugs it off, gets back to regular life, and then FINALLY decides to go after the killer. And then suddenly everything is resolved and she is sitting in the room with the man on the transcript and she is working with others like her to escape the facility. Then the book ends and I’m left feeling nothing. No attachment to the characters, no sad feeling that the book is over, just meh.
All in all I did not really enjoy Vesper. It was just kind of an in between book that was a bit less then ok but I didn’t hate it or anything. It just left me wishing it had been something more.
Thank you for the honest review! I've actually never heard of Vesper before.
ReplyDeleteI bought it when Epic Reads had their Epic Deals Sale back in December for an x-mas present to myself. I believe the sequel Havoc comes out later this year.
ReplyDeleteI like the covers of these books. They are very visually appealing. And the premise is intriguing. My library just shelved all three of the books in this series, and when I saw the covers and read the synopsis I jumped on Goodreads to check out what people were saying. Not good things, honestly. They ended up staying on the shelf at the library. After your lovely review, I am glad that I didn't bring them home. I think I would have been highly disappointed.
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