Struck

Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My name is Mia Price, and I'm a human lightning rod.

After an incredibly promising start and a lot of excitement on my part, the second half of Struck really fell flat and completely failed to impress me.

On the surface, Struck is pretty original: a girl who gets hit by lightning over and over again is doing her best to keep her family alive and sane after a huge natural disaster, while being pulled in two different directions by religious fanatics and their opposers. Both groups are convinced that the Armageddon is coming in just a few days and that they desperately need Mia’s special abilities, therefore they’re ready to do just about anything to force Mia to join their side. To make matters worse, her family is also divided: her mother has been completely brainwashed by the powerful televangelist, Prophet, while her brother wants nothing more than to join the other group, Seekers. Sounds very interesting, right? And it is, for the most part, just be aware that you’ll find the same story we’ve seen a million times before if you look just a little deeper beneath the surface.

I felt that the thing that drew me to this novel initially, Mia’s ability to attract lightening, wasn’t explored nearly enough. That’s what I wanted to read about the most. After the delicious statement at the beginning of the book (“My name is Mia Price and I’m a lightning addict.”), I was expecting the author to take this much, much farther than she actually did. Instead she chose to go down a well-worn path: Mia running blindly into danger to save her mother or her brother, the beautiful, mysterious boy that simply refuses to tell her what his deal is, Mia being stupid, Mia being stupid, Mia being incredibly stupid… well, you get the picture.

For me, there comes a point in the book where I get so irritated by the main character’s choices that I stop caring for the plot altogether. I think what bothered me the most was that a lot of Mia’s problems could have been avoided with one or two serious conversations. She kept making stupid choices to keep her brother out of trouble, when all she really had to do was sit down and explain a few things to him. Same goes for Jeremy: he insisted on being vague while warning Mia to stay away from the Waste and the Seekers, when the whole truth would have been much more effective.

Still, I suppose if you’re in the mood for paranormal YA, you could do much, much worse than Struck. I have no objections whatsoever to Bosworth’s writing style, the beginning is very compelling, it pulls you right in so you don’t have to go through that torturous period of getting into the story. I just wish she maintained the same level of originality till the very end, instead of hiding behind tropes and clichés.


And since I'm writing this on a very special day, I need to include just one more thing: Happy birthday to my most wonderful co-blogger and the best friend a girl could ever hope for.