Review: Paranormalcy - Kiersten White

Where I got it: Library
Rating: 3.5 stars 
Cover Rating: 5 stars (OOOOOOOHHHH AAHHHHHH) 
Genre: Young Adult 
Publication Date: September 1, 2010
Publisher: Harperteen
Page Count: 335 p.

Evie always thought of herself as normal. Despite the fact that she was an orphan, saved from certain death by the International Paranormal Containment Agency. Also despite the fact that she can see who people really are, she can see through paranormals' glamours. Inside she knows that she is just a typical teen. She watches Easton Heights and longs to roam the halls of a high school and have drama filled  relationships, instead she gets to bag and tag monsters. When an unidentified paranormal sneaks into the Agency headquarters, Evie's whole perspective starts to change. She finds that maybe being paranormal isn't necessarily a bad thing...that is until something starts killing the paranormals and no one knows who or what is doing it. Evie has to make some tough decisions to save herself and possibly the ones she cares about.

Evie was in turns annoying and charismatically funny. It's hard knowing how Evie should be acting since I have never been locked up underground with no one my own age for more than a decade. Still Evie seemed relatively normal. This novel managed to incorporate all sorts of oddities into one interesting story. You get to read about mermaids, hags, faeries, werewolves, vampires and more all in one convenient story of a teenage angst. It seemed like Evie had too much freedom to roam about and do whatever she wanted, she rarely got in any actual trouble and seemed to have little self-restraint despite how she grew up. The action scenes were at times very lackluster. The climax seemed to fall short of extraordinary, lots of build up and then it just sort of tapered off slowly. At times parts of this novel moved a bit too fast while other things seemed ridiculously drawn out. I can't say too much on this without ruining the novel but people just seemed to go with the flow and a lot of characters seemed severely undeveloped despite the major parts they would play. Granted, underdevelopment of some characters is necessary because they are elusive beings, but still other characters could have had a little more meat to them, Evie included. Even though this debut had it's faults, I still think it was worth the read, it was quirky and fun. I can see that Kiersten White has a lot of potential and look forward to reading her next novel. This will certainly appeal to YAs who are looking for a paranormal read with maybe a little romance but also some action.

First Line:
"'Wait--did you-- You just yawned!' The vampire's arms, raised over his head in the classic Dracula pose, dropped to his sides."

Favorite Line:
"'It ranks right up there with lockers. In fact, sometimes I put my license in my locker, and it's so cool I worry that the whole thing might explode with the sheer coolness of it all.'"