Cannonball Read III: Wake series by Lisa McMann
By Ashley | Posted Under Book Reviews | Comments (4)
These are the reviews that put Ashley over the top to win Cannonball Read III. Congrats again! —TU
Menh. That pretty much describes how I feel about the whole series. My main problem is none of the books feel whole. You have to read the whole series for it to feel like you have read one cohesive storyline.
In Wake you are introduced to Jane, who has the ability to see other people’s dreams. Or better put, if someone around Jane is dreaming, she falls into a cationic state and experiences the other person’s dream until they wake up. This “ability” makes driving, having sleep overs, and study period a living nightmare. Wake mostly sets up who Jane is and how this ability affects her daily routine and social life. She has access to everybody’s deepest fantasy and desires, but there are some secrets you shouldn’t have access to.
For example, Jane has stumbled upon the dark secrets someone she cares about. Can she hide the fact that she knows more about this person’s life than she should? Unfortunately, the secret is not that deep and dark and there is really no mystery at all in the novel other than why her love interest keeps lying to her.
Fade picks up right where Wake left off and this novel actually seems to have an actual mystery and plot direction. Apparently there is a sexual predator at Jane’s high school and Jane and Cabel are helping the police discover who it is. This novel would have worked better if Jane had actually used her “power” to help solve the case, but mostly she only breaks the case with a mixture of good and bad luck.
Jane’s ability is really interesting and has a lot of promise, but unless she is within 10 feet of a suspect when he falls asleep and he just happens to dream of whatever crimes he has been committing, her ability is seriously lame. At least her ability in relation to crime fighting. The best part of the novel is that Jane starts to realize that her ability has some serious consequences, her life will always be complicated, and she struggles to come to terms with these consequences.
In the end of trilogy, Gone, Jane finds out about her biological father and it looks like the dream-catching ability may be hereditary. Her father holed himself up and lived as a hermit to survive the complications of being a dream catcher. Jane finds herself weighing the pros and cons of her ability or living in solitude for the rest of her life.
If you have read the other two novels in this series, you pretty much have to read the last one, since none of the novels on their own feel like they have a complete story structure. I’ll just end these reviews with how I started it. Menh.
Sorry the reviews are so short but the books are insanely short and I just couldn’t will myself to write more on them.
For more of Ashley’s reviews, check out her blog, On the Brink of Insanity.
These reviews are part of Cannonball Read III. For more information, click here.
Each Time You Like, Share, Tweet or Stumble a Pajiba Post, An Angel Does the Paul Rudd Dance
← Cannonball Read III: And the Winner Is... | Sarah Jane is Dining With Ten Doctors Tonight: Elisabeth Sladen Passes On →
Comments
Posted by: crabtree at April 20, 2011 9:59 AM
Congratulations Ashley! I'm impressed by how fast you read. It's always sad though, when you read books that aren't that amazing. I admire your perseverance in that you kept on reading the series when the first book was so meh. I would have quit.