It's no sekret that I was really excited to read Lindsay Smith's debut and that I had extremely high expectations. Unfortunately I was underwhelmed by Sekret and I wasn't a fan of the way it combined paranormal and historical aspects. Those two genres blend well in most cases, but in Sekret the use of the Russian setting and psychics just didn't interconnect properly and I felt like Sekret didn't do either genre justice. I think Smith wanted to give readers the best of both genres, but in doing so she managed to water-down Sekret and turned into a tedious read.
Yulia is unwillingly forced into working for the KGB and she has quite the conundrum. Does she help the KGB and potentially hurt the Soviet Union's "rebels" or refuse and have her family tortured? Each option seems absolutely terrible and Yulia just doesn't know what to do with her abilities. Yulia has to try to find some sort of balance and work together with her supernatural team-mates.
It took so long for me to get into Sekret, something about this book just didn't click with me. The story is simple, not all that interesting and it never really managed to surprise me. So much of the novel is about setting the scene of the book and is devoted to introducing readers to Yulia, our psychic main character. There truly was nothing remarkable about Yulia and I truly can't remember any aspect of her personality that I found unique. The only thing that is some-what memorable about Yulia is her love for her family and her brother, but I've seen much better familial relationships displayed in other books. I felt bad for Yulia, but I didn't exactly like her character and wish Smith had made her easier to empathize with. All of the other character in Sekret besides Yulia didn't interest me and I can't even remember the names of all of the other characters because there was nothing distinguishable about them in my mind. All of the other characters in my mind are apart of this amorphous blob because their personalities and quirks constantly seemed to overlap.
I truly don't understand why YA authors seem to think that every single book needs a romance; Sekret's romance is extremely unnecessary and irritating. I personally thought that the romance in Sekret laid the infrastructure for a pointless love triangle, but I guess I'll find out in Skandal (book #2) if my prediction turns out to be true. The love interests were extremely bland and I never really found their cardboard personalities to be interesting.
It's extremely upsetting how little I enjoyed the paranormal aspects of this book; the psychic powers were so underused and didn't really even feel like they were an important part of the story. The abilities in Sekret are surprisingly tame and they felt as cheap and inauthentic as one of those Fortune Telling Machines they have at arcades. Each member of the team had a dull, unimaginative ability and even the angsty, teenage drama appealed to me more than the cheap abilities.
It took me a while to enjoy Sekret, but in the end it wasn't a remarkable read with its dull characters, sub par paranormal aspects and uninteresting historical backdrop. I'm fairly certain that I won't be continuing this series as of now. I truly wish I had enjoyed Sekret more, but its flaws were overwhelming and I feel like the story was missing a hook factor, something that would've made me want to read this book from cover to cover.
From your review, I feel like this book could have been so much better if the author had dedicated to just historical fiction rather than forcing the paranormal in there. And the trend to shove love-triangles down the readers throats is becoming annoying! Thanks for your honest review :)
ReplyDeleteJuli @ Universe in Words