There's something very wrong with Eve. She can remember nothing, almost nothing, tantalizing creepy visions and moments of her life. She's in a witness protection program, but she doesn't know why, she doesn't know who to trust, she has magic that she can't control. All the elements are there, but it takes some dedication to get into the story. Slow going, confusing, creepy. Also difficult to put down and ultimately a very unexpected story. ( )

Oh my god. Sarah Beth Durst somehow got a hold of my diaries from middle school and turned to into a boy. HOW DID SHE DO THAT?

Plot: 5/5
Loved it. It was mystery and magic and creepy and cool. one thing that I liked and disliked at the same time was the memory lapses the main character had. BECAUSE I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED during those memory lapses, but at the same time, me not knowing gave me more of a sense of what the character was going through not remembering.
Masterfully done, Sarah Beth Durst. Masterful.

Characters: 3/5
The reason I'm not giving the character section a high score is because there were a LOT of characters in this book, yet I only feel like I know three of them: Eve, Zach, and Malcolm. All excellent characters, but what about Aunt Nikki and Aidan and Victoria and Lou and Topher? What are their feeling, their motivations? I know that some of those characters motivations were explained, but I didn't feel it. I have to FEEL it.

The Romance: 4/5
I loved Eve and Zach and I love the way they interacted with each other, and I love their romance. but the way it began felt a little forced, and this is probably because of those memory lapses (that were SO frustrating, by the way) but it just, it didn't feel natural.

Overall: 12/15
Overall, I liked the book and the main characters, and the memory lapses were an interesting and compelling rhetorical choice, but overall, they took too much away from the book, in my opinion. they took more than they gave, so in my view, they are unjustified.
( )

Eve is in Witness Protection. She ought to feel safe, but she doesn't. She doesn't because she can't remember anything, not one thing, from the time before she met her federal handlers. All she knows is they very much need her to remember and will do nearly anything to make that happen. And that makes her afraid.

As part of her agreement with her handlers, they've gotten her a Summer job shelving books at the local library. It's there she meets the boy who literally makes them float when they kiss. Somehow, Eve is magic, and he can use it.

When things get more dangerous for Eve--more memory losses, more frightening visions, and the knowledge that the serial killer she's trying to help the feds find might just be trying to find her--she starts to learn where she comes from. What she never imagined is what she'd learn about what she is.

There's something about Durst's writing that captured my attention and held it. She made the magic seem truly magical and showed us Eve's world, where frightening things lurk beneath the everyday.

This book is about trust and family, about blame and justice. And it's about Eve, wanting and having a life of her own.

(Provided by publisher) ( )

(Originally reviewed at thelibraryladies.com.)

I’ve read several of Sarah Beth Durst’s books in the past, and they are if anything, always unique. So when I discovered this one, with its creepy carnival imagery, amnesia, and serial killer nemesis, I knew that the story would be in the hands of an author capable of fully taking advantage of these elements.

The story started off slowly for me, to be honest. While Eve’s amnesia is an important part of the story, it also leaves the reader in an awkward place being equally (perhaps even more so!) in the dark as she is. We’re pretty much plopped down into a situation with no background information and a narrator who doesn’t know anymore than we do, but who is clearly involved in something nefarious, with hints being thrown every direction by other characters. Durst also wasn’t in a rush to resolve this. I was about a third of the way into the book before I started feeling truly invested in the story. And while this is a rather large hurdle to leap for many readers, I would say the later pay off is definitely worth it.

Eve herself is such a unique narrator. Her voice is so strange and it speaks to the deftness of Durst’s abilities that she can show Eve’s growth through even the most minute of changes in Eve’s outlook on what goes on around her. When the reveal comes towards the end of the story, I actually found myself paging back through the book trying to spot these change points, many of which I missed in my initial read through.

As for the twist itself, parts of it I was able to guess, but others came completely out of the blue. The motivation of the villain, Eve’s true back story in relation to the villain, was both heart breaking and distinctly chilling. I particularly appreciated the fact that the story is not quickly wrapped up once some of these twists become clear and we get to fully explore the reality of these developments and spend time in this new world order.

Further, the confusion and distrust that leads to these reveals were excellent. Eve has been told everything, she remembers/knows none of it for herself. So as she begins to question those around her, so do we, the reader. Her bouts of amnesia were both frustrating and refreshingly new to this type of story. She isn’t just a narrator who doesn’t remember her past but whose stories unfolds neatly from there on out. Eve keeps forgetting. Between chapters even! Like I said, frustrating, but also very interesting.

As for supporting characters, these were a bit more hit and miss. I loved Malcom from the get go, and grew to love his partner as well. However, I was less thrilled with the three other teens Eve meets: Aiden, Victoria, and Topher. They seemed like a neat idea, but ultimately, I feel like they didn’t even need to be in the story. Very little of the outcome would have been changed, and they were often so unlikable that I found myself wanting to skim read through their portions.

And as for the love interest, Zack…I just don’t know. There are elements of his character that I liked, but he never fully recovered for me from his introductory line of dialogue when first meeting Eve:“I think it’s a shame that it’s customary to shake hands upon greeting when what I really want to do is kiss your lips and see if you taste like strawberries.”

Personally, if a guy introduced himself to me that way the door would be slammed on the chance of us even be acquaintances, let alone romantically involved, right then and there. It’s supposed to be twisted together with Zack’s defining characteristic: he does not tell lies. And while this plays an important role later in the story, I think there is an obvious miss between “not telling lies” and “not spewing out every ridiculous-bordering-on-creepy thought that comes into your head to a complete stranger.”

Slow start and creepy Zack aside, once pieces of the mystery started fitting together, I couldn’t put this book down. If you like dark, fantasy stories and can be patient with unreliable narrators and a slow start, definitely check this one out! ( )

Eve wakes up in a new body, on a new world. She's in Witness Protection hiding from a supernatural serial killer, but although she's apparently a very important witness, she's lost all her memories. She tries to piece her past together, with weird visions of a magical carnival as her only clues.

I like the concept a lot, but I was bothered by the fact that until the last two chapters, the reader has no idea at all what's going on. Then everything is explained in one big dump of text. ( )