Wildefire by Karsten Knight

Sunday, March 16, 2014

     Ashline Wilde hasn't led the most normal life thus far. She was adopted and doesn't remember her birth parents. Even worse, she was sent to boarding school after her older sister, Eve, killed a girl using unusual methods, ones Ashline doesn't want to even fathom. Now Ashline leads a semi-normal life. That is, until her sister comes back to haunt her. Now Ash is dodging Eve while trying to deal with cryptic messages from a blind girl, along with several other students whose lives haven't exactly been normal. Could Ashline really be a reincarnated goddess? If so, why doesn't she seem to have any magical powers? Just to make matters worse, Ash meets an incredible boy. Only problem is, everyone wears a mask... and not everything is as it seems.
     I enjoyed this book for many reasons. The first was that Ashline was black. I was surprised when I first read that, which made me think: How many books have I read where the main character wasn't white? Very few. I hope more authors take the opportunity to write about lead characters with a variety of skin colours in normal situations. Often there are black sidekicks, but hardly ever a main character. Since people often prefer to write about characters similar to themselves, this made me wonder is there are fewer black writers. Simple things like this in a book, that make me think about something, contribute to a higher rating of the story.
     I really liked the fact that this story was full of surprises. There was never a time that I expected what would happen. The writing style was different than any I've read before. This can be good or bad, since every author's writing differs a bit; however, Karsten Knight's did dramatically. Familiarity leads to comfortable reading, which is why at first this can be a negative. After getting used to Knight's style, though, I started to delve into the book a bit more. This different style is definitely part of the reason why I didn't see certain situations coming: hints may have been buried in the background for me, as a new reader to his style.
     I hate when summaries give away vital information to the book's contents. The summary on the back of this book caused me to assume that all details it mentioned - which I won't speak of, for future readers' sakes - would be introduced very close to the beginning of this story. This turned out to be very untrue, a fact I was not happy about. What's the point of reading a book if you already know the major plot points? I found that the little things surprised me more than the big ones that were designed to take the reader aback. If something as simple as the summary were changed, I would have enjoyed this book even more.
     Overall, I thought this book was quite creative and inventive; however, it didn't reach my expectations of how much I would enjoy it. It did have an interesting plot line, though, and teenage situations I can actually imagine happening, as opposed to the overused and mainly untrue ones that are normally written of. I would give this story a rating of four stars. Not the best four star book I've ever read, but it had an unexpected twist ending. I found it was certainly better than three stars. I would suggest this novel to any reader who looks for romance, special powers, and familial difficulties.