Book Review- Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

 Title: Paranormalcy

 Author:Kiersten White

Series:Paranormalcy #1

 Published: January 6th 2011 by HarperCollins

 Length:320 pages

Warnings:violence, a fair amount of weapons, kissing

 Other info:The second book in the series will be published later in the year and a third is planned. You can find Kiersten White on twitter and facebook, and can find her website here.

Summary :Weird as it is working for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, Evie's always thought of herself as normal. Sure, her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend is a faerie, she’s falling for a shape-shifter, and she’s the only person who can see through paranormals' glamours, but still. Normal.

Only now paranormals are dying, and Evie's dreams are filled with haunting voices and mysterious prophecies. She soon realizes that there may be a link between her abilities and the sudden rash of deaths. Not only that, but she may very well be at the center of a dark faerie prophecy promising destruction to all paranormal creatures.

 Review: The opening was brilliant, funny and different to the normal heroine-fights-paranormal books. Evie, our heroine, has been sent on a mission from the IPCA, an agency dealing with making paranormal creatures safe by doing things such as sterilising werewolves and using Faerie names to control them. Anyway, Evie  has been sent on this mission,  which is to bring in a roughe vampire. She does so with an ankle tracker, sharp retorts and a taser gun. Points earnt for the taser. After this, we meet a whole load of paranormals: Lish the mermaid, Reth the faerie, Jaques the werewolf and Lend the shapeshifter unlike anything we’re used to.  The first part of the book is us getting to know the characters pretty well, especially  Lend and Evie. Lend has broken into IPCA headquarters, earning himself a cell, which Evie visits constantly. This is where most of the romance comes from, in case your wondering.  Come on, you knew there’d be some. And the other point in the mandatory love triangle is Reth. Just needed to clear that up.  Also in the beginning of the book is…erm…yeah, it s just really character introductions.

Things get going about halfway through when someone else breaks in to IPCA, this time going on a quick killing spree. Evie and Lend escape, like Reth, and some others, who we never really see again,. Evie and Lend go back to his place, we meet some more paranormals  and also we find out who the killer is. Its Vivian, an Empty One who is scarily similar to Evie.

Anyway, things happen and it all comes down to a fairly dramatic showdown with Evia and Lend vs Vivian and an uncontrollable faerie. Then Evie finally discovers what she is exactly and the final scene is a typical boy/girl in love happy romance scenee. Fun.

I liked Evie’s world a lot.its interesting, and different to most. Everything had a reason behind it, and it was pretty believable- as believeable as a world where paranormal creatures are walking around can be.

There were a lot of unexpected twists and turns. They kept it fast flowing and action packed.

Evie’s narration was good- fully descriptive, and friendly, like any teenage girl. Especially at the start, it was witty anad funny. however, I think as she fell further in love (that the right expression? Probably not. Oh well), she lost some of the sass and sharpness that made me like her a lot. Not to say I didn’t like her at all, its just the character got weaker as the book went on.

The romance wasn’t particularly well written- from the beginning it was pretty obvious who she would end up with.  The romance scenes took up about half of the book, which I think is a bit too much for something with a blurb that promises more mystery etc. Or maybe its just me and my dislike for overly romantic stuff. I don’t know.

Overall: I give this Strength 3 tea because while it started off really well  but got a little less interesting as it went on. recommended to those who like paranormal romance a lot, and don’t care too much about the fighting-heroine side of things.