Novel Review: Hunting Lila (Lila, #1) by Sarah Alderson

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5-4

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster UK)

Publish Date: August, 2011

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she’s prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she’s been in love with her brother’s best friend, Alex, since forever.

After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust—her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organization called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they’ve found them.

In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realizes that she is not alone—there are others out there just like her—people with special powers—and her mother’s killer is one of them…

Something Specific:

Quotes:

• "Relief rushed through me. No girlfriend! Alex needed a good woman. He’d admitted it himself. I wondered how I might fit the bill. I was neither a woman nor very good.” (Paperback, pg. 59)
• "‘You know, there’s this old saying, I’m not sure of the exact translation, but it’s something like “he who fears to suffer, suffers from fear” – think about it.’” (Pg. 126)

The Cover:

Overall I rather like this cover. It's fitting, both the image and the feel, it's cute. I think the pose of the model looks a little awkward or something, but that's just a minor thing to me. I like it.

Review:

So this book is only available in the UK? I thought that it was published over in the US, but I guess only the e-book is. Right? Because I couldn’t find it anywhere, and ended up getting it from the marketplace. I don’t really understand why it hasn’t been brought over here, as it seems like something that US readers would like. It’s been on my list ever since I heard about it, which was a couple of years ago, I think around the time it was released in the UK. Either way, I bought it online, and read it really soon after receiving it.

And I really liked it. This book surprised me on several fronts, the characters upset me and frustrated me several times, but overall I really liked it. And want the next book very soon.

I liked Lila. I understood Lila, and related to her a bit. She’s feisty, and she’s scared with very good reason, but she doesn’t give in when she doesn’t believe she should. I really liked her relationship with her brother, Jack, but I have a soft spot for brother-sister relationships. They get along really well, even though Jack frustrated me on several points, particularly with not telling Lila things. Then there’s Alex, who I am a rather big fan of. I loved his relationship with Lila, a whole lot. They get along so well, and they were so cute, I just really liked them together. I just did.

But then there’s the issue with neither of them telling Lila anything, when they really should have. That always happens, and I suppose there was some reason with it being possibly against the rules to Unit, but I don’t care. That’s not okay. She needed to know. Especially when she became a part of it.

And I loved her part in it, and understood why she was so scared, because she had good reason. Especially when Alex and Jack reacted like they did, those jerks. I was not happy with their reactions, even if they kind of had their reasons.

And then Lila meets the people who are like her, people with odd powers/abilities, who are also being hunted, and that was a big surprise to me. I wasn’t expecting it for some reason, and I really liked that. I really liked how that turned out, for all of them. Although that led to the ending, and I did not like that. The ending was horrible, a huge cliffhanger. Which makes me want the next book all the more. I hope to get it soon.

The powers element of the book I really liked, and was fun to read about, because of how it was handled, and the variety. The writing was good, and kept me interested. I was turned off at first to the fact that the author uses just an apostrophe instead of quotation marks for dialogue, but I got used to it quickly. And it’s opened me up to reading other books that do that, so I guess that’s good, even if I’m still not a huge fan. 

Overall, I really liked this book. It was surprising, fun, I liked the characters a lot, and it was a quick read. I hope to get the next one, and others by Alderson, hopefully soon.