DNF Review – Thief of Lies (Library Jumpers, Book 1) by Brenda Drake (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Entangled
Release Date: January 5, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1633752214
Stand Alone or Series: 1st volume in the Library Jumpers series
Source: Gift
Rating: 3/5 stars

“Gia Kearns would rather fight with boys than kiss them. That is, until Arik, a leather clad hottie in the Boston Athenaeum, suddenly disappears. While examining the book of world libraries he abandoned, Gia unwittingly speaks the key that sucks her and her friends into a photograph and transports them into a Paris library, where Arik and his Sentinels-magical knights charged with protecting humans from the creatures traveling across the gateway books-rescue them from a demonic hound.

Jumping into some of the world’s most beautiful libraries would be a dream come true for Gia, if she weren’t busy resisting her heart or dodging an exiled wizard seeking revenge on both the Mystik and human worlds. Add a French flirt obsessed with Arik and a fling with a young wizard, and Gia must choose between her heart and her head, between Arik’s world and her own, before both are destroyed.”

I was drawn to the beautiful cover of this book (it really is a thing of beauty) and the intriguing description. Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. I read the first 200 pages but just couldn’t get into the story. The author’s writing style was too disjointed and she jumped around too much. It was just very hard for me to read, which is disappointing because I liked a lot of the ideas and concepts presented in this story.

The book is about a young woman, Gia, who ends up getting sucked into a book (literally) and teleported to a far off library. There she finds out about crazy demons and the Sentinels that guard humanity from these demons. The fact that Gia can teleport means that she is something other than human and she quickly learns about her mysterious past and the expectations of her.

I had a couple big issues with this book. The first is that the writing style just doesn’t flow well and “sounds” very choppy; I really struggled with this. The second is that a lot of big ideas and things are thrown at the reader really quickly. For example you think Gia’s past is going to be this big mystery and then, bam!, her father shows up. Then while you are still reeling from the whole teleporting to libraries thing and the demon thing…all the sudden Gia is in another dimension and undergoing all this training. It was just a lot very rapidly and it wasn’t put together very well.

The last issue I had was the conflict between Gia’s voice and how she was described. She’s described as being this super hardcore chick who likes fighting but then she comes across as really girly and bookish in the way she acts and the things she says. My mind was constantly struggling to reconcile the way Gia was described with the way she acted and spoke throughout the book.

Overall this is an okay book. I really liked some of the concepts but the writing and way the story was put together was very jerky and hard to read. I struggled with this pretty much from the beginning and decided it just wasn’t for me. This book does have one of the most beautiful covers I have seen though; I really love the artwork and the matte texture to the cover.