Review: Born at Midnight

Born at Midnight (Shadow Falls #1), by C.C. Hunter. The summary:

One night Kylie Galen finds herself at the wrong party, with the wrong people, and it changes her life forever. Her mother ships her off to Shadow Falls--a camp for troubled teens, and within hours of arriving, it becomes painfully clear that her fellow campers aren’t just “troubled.” Here at Shadow Falls, vampires, werewolves, shapshifters, witches and fairies train side by side--learning to harness their powers, control their magic and live in the normal world.

Kylie’s never felt normal, but surely she doesn’t belong here with a bunch of paranormal freaks either. Or does she? They insist Kylie is one of them, and that she was brought here for a reason. As if life wasn’t complicated enough, enter Derek and Lucas. Derek’s a half-fae who’s determined to be her boyfriend, and Lucas is a smokin’ hot werewolf with whom Kylie shares a secret past. Both Derek and Lucas couldn’t be more different, but they both have a powerful hold on her heart.

Even though Kylie feels deeply uncertain about everything, one thing is becoming painfully clear--Shadow Falls is exactly where she belongs…

Contemporary YA is undisputedly my favorite YA genre, but I’ve been making an attempt recently to read some paranormal YA, a genre that never won me over in the past. But I’ve really been getting into it lately and have discovered that paranormal fiction doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as I though it did. I might even be willing to confess that I’ve really liked some of them. “Born at Midnight” probably isn’t my favorite of the paranormal YAs I’ve been trying out recently, but it still was pretty enjoyable.

I liked the whole “summer camp for teen paranormals” that this book had going on. It was fun to get to have all the different kinds of supernaturals (vampires, shape shifters, witches, fairies, werewolves, etc.) in one place and to see what their different powers are. And I thought Kylie was generally pretty likeable--she’s a bit standoffish and kind of a loner, but she’s happy that way, so I was down with that. I appreciate how she tries to be a good friend, and when she fails, she realizes it and changes her attitude or actions. And as another plus to this book, there are a ton of hot guys.

But there were things that annoyed me. The thing that bugged me the most was how it took Kylie the ENTIRE book to face the fact that she’s not a normal human. I mean, the girl see’s ghosts, for pete’s sake, but the whole time she refused to accept that she was a supernatural. Ug. I just wanted to be like, “Girl, remember that ghost that keeps following you around and how all the other supernaturals keep telling you you’re one too? Face the facts already!” Yes, some skepticism on her part was definitely called for, but I think she took it waaaaay to far. Another thing that got to me was that there wasn’t much plot. As a reader of mainly contemporary YAs, I don’t need much plot to be happy. But I’ve come to expect more action in paranormal fiction, so this book’s lack of it threw me off a little bit. And don’t even get me started on the love triangle in this book. Well, actually it’s a love . . . square? Since she has three guys in love with her. Yes, THREE. A little excessive if you ask me.

So I realize my paragraph about the things that annoyed me is longer than the paragraph about things I liked, but don’t get me wrong, I did generally like the book. It’s not the best YA paranormal I’ve read so far, but it’s still way better than I ever thought the genre could be. I’m undecided about whether I’ll be reading the rest of the series, but I think I’m leaning towards yes.