Review ~ Concealed (Concealed 1) - Sang Kromah

Ebook received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Publisher: Smith Publicity
Published: October 15th 2011

Description
Some believe that at birth, we’re each born with some sort of guardian angel attached to us, watching from afar, but never seen by the human eye. But they’re wrong. Truth is it’s not that simple. There are certain people, special people, born of this world and of the other, who need that extra protection…that extra guidance. They go their entire lives, unaware of the other world, and unaware of the existence of their own personal watcher that watches from afar. But what happens when fate takes a turn for the worse, and The One who needs the aid of a watcher more than anyone before her can’t be found to be protected?

Bijou Fitzroy is strange. With the chaotic and unwanted gift of being an empath, she has spent her entire life as a sheltered recluse, being homeschooled by her secretive overprotective grandmother, who never stays long enough in one location for Bijou to ever settle and make friends. Not only does she lack social skills, but her physical appearance is so ethereal that it beckons onlookers to look away before she has the chance to make eye contact. Oh, and things get even weirder. Besides the occasional tendency to see strange things that no one else seems to notice, sixteen-year-old Bijou has been plagued by semi-prophetic nightmares of strange creatures her entire life; yet she yearns for sleep, because it’s the only place she gets to see him…well sort of. No matter what Bijou dreams of, the faceless boy is always there like some sort of harbinger of danger, always watching, always waiting. And even though his coming always pre-empts chaos, she’s fallen in love with this boy without a face.

When Bijou and her grandmother move to Eldersburg and she starts to attend the local high school, she meets Sebastian Sinjin, a strange boy, who forces Bijou to question the world around her, and the grandmother she thought she knew. Bijou’s world begins to crumble as the creatures from her nightmares begin to take shape in her reality, the faceless boy becomes real, and town locals begin to disappear as she finds herself at the center of a war she never knew was being fought. Bijou has to stand alone and be the savior everyone expects her to be.

My Opinion

This book started off well, although a little slow. It was intriguing and drew me into the story so I read the first 20% of this book with ease. However after this point it did become a struggle to keep turning the pages.  There were moments that were both good and enjoyable while others were very easy to skim over as they didn't hold my interest. The writing did fluctuate quite a bit.

The intrigue of being the new kid, meeting a hot guy and being different was well done at the start however as the book moved on Bijou became more whiney and mopey at having no friends, wanting to be normal and her longing over Sebastian. It did become slightly irritating. As well as this the writing was quite jumpy and it made it hard to follow what was going on. This may be because of the 1st person narrative and therefore showing just how confused Bijou was but personally I didn't like it. 

The main thing I didn't like was there were too many paranormal creatures involved. At the start I was led to believe that Djinns were a supernatural species and when references were made to fae, elves and other creature it reinforced this assumption. However around the half way mark the term Djinn seemed to be used as a broad term for anything paranormal and this was the point things got really confusing. As well as this when Gigi invited over family more and more characters were introduced with little background. This made it hard to follow who was who, whether they were good or bad (the lines were very blurry in this book) and what they were. 

Because of this I found it very hard to connect with any of the characters, even Bijou and Sebastian. I will admit that Sebastian did have moments where I liked him and connected slightly but they were brief. For most of the book I felt very distant which made it a struggle to finish.

Overall Concealed starts off well. It intrigues you into reading more but as it goes on it gets more confusing and hard to follow very quickly. There is a fluctuation in the writing between really interesting moments and boring ones. The beginning and brief moments with Sebastian are the redeeming qualities for me which is why I bumped my rating to 3 stars and in general it was an average read that may be worth checking out.