Guys I may be slightly aging out (reading taste wise) the younger end of YA. At least, I am when the premise doesn't feel original enough to keep me interested. I DNF'ed this at about 40%, skimming some of the rest.

Allie came off...young. She's 15 at the start (her 16th bday occurs pretty soon into the book) and she spends a lot of the prologue discussing (mostly to herself) at length how different the felt. how different others treated her. How they treated her with either deference, contempt or grudging polite friendliness.

This makes sense later when you find out she is actually Other (not only Other, but a special kind of Other. A rare 'there seems to be only two of them' special kind of Other), however until she hits her bday she is normal. Moves around a lot, a bit socially awkward, but normal. As far as I could tell (again I skimmed more than half of this) she didn't exude some sort of mystic godly aura. I know it's a common trope that normal humans always unconsciously sense when something Other is in their presence, but it seems a bit of a stretch that for the first dozen pages Allie acted like she was an alien princess in witness protection just because folk "flinched" away from her touch involuntarily.

There is a love triangle of sorts. There's Aiden (who is Other like her) and Vince (who is human like she wants to be), but far as I can tell Aiden is really understanding that she wants to ignore the connection she keeps bringing up and not be with him. He's all for her exploring who she is and what she wants...as long as she doesn't keep playing around with his feelings. Which is fair honestly.

But this did nothing for me. I've read about normals being Other secretly, about Immortals finding each other, Others trying to be normal...and in far more interesting ways.

YMMV so let me know in the comments if you felt different.

"Why did her parents always feel the need to run? What do they know about Allie's background? How do they know about Immortals?

Why did Naeemah caution Allie about her relationship with Aidan? I think she knows something and have an inkling about the true nature, why the 'don't go further'?"

"*exasperated sigh* a love triangle"

-I know they're Complements.

-Allie is resisting because Vince represents something normal that she has wanted for ages. Added normal to the added upheaval of her life.
-Aidan is pushing because of his loneliness and finally finding someone he's at ease with.

-Drama. Drama. Drama. ( )

I won The Awakening from a book blog that I follow. The Awakening by Melissa A. Craven is the first book in the Emerge series. We follow Allie and Aidan as they discover who and what they are. The character development and world building is exceptional. The only problem that I had with reading this book was the entire book is about Allie and Aidan's training. I found it to be boring and monotonous. ( )