Review: Twisted Fate by Norah Olson

Twisted Fate by Norah Olson
Published by Katherine Tegen Books on January 20th 2015
Pages: 272
Source: Katherine Tegan Books Edelweiss
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When Alyson meets Graham Copeland, the new boy next door, she instantly feels like he’s a kindred spirit—shy and awkward like her, someone who has trouble making friends. It’s impossible to resist having a crush on him.

As usual, her sister, Sydney, sees things differently. In Sydney's mind, Graham's odd personality and secretive past scream psychopath, not sweetheart. Her gut is telling her to stay away from him, and to protect a love-struck Alyson from her own naïveté. But despite her instincts, Sydney is surprised to realize that a part of her is drawn to Graham, too.

And the more Sydney gets to know him, the more she realizes just how right—and wrong—she is about everything.

Perfect for fans of Michelle Hodkin, and E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars, Twisted Fate is an unputdownable novel, teeming with suspense.

 
I was REALLY excited to get started on Twisted Fate as my first debut of the new year. It sounded so intriguing and exactly the type of twisty thriller that keeps me hooked until the end… unfortunately for the wrong reasons.

The characters were just odd, like you know something is off with them from the moment you start reading. The two sisters are two sides of a coin, complete opposites in every way. The parents are just nonexistent and as much as they are mentioned a ton, you hardly get a glimpse of them. I did like Declan and Becky, there were interesting and good friends to Syd but ultimately I didn’t really care about any of the characters which was one of the main issues for me. I like to get attached or feel something for at least one of the characters and I felt nothing here.

There is a lot of point of views here. A police chief (or maybe two now that I think about it), Kim, Graham, Syd, Alyson… Becky… there is probably more, but it was so weird and choppy at times. Not too mention I couldn’t tell a few of the voices apart so I had to look back to see who’s chapter I was reading a few times.

I basically knew what was happening with the ‘twist’ from the first few chapters. I have no idea whether it was supposed to be like that (but something tells me not based on the ending) but that really, really took a huge chunk of enjoyment of the book for me. I essentially wanted to finish it just to see if I was correct. I also thought that the story was really disjointed and there was A LOT of information missing from the overall storyline.

View Spoiler »Ok, so it seems like Alyson/Sydney had this happening for a really long time. And it became pretty apparent that it must have been used as initially a coping mechanism for absentee parents when she was younger, but there was literally NO explanation or even suspicion from everyone else that it was happening. Like her two best friends never even commented on it at all? And how the entire death happened? It was just odd to me, and large parts of that story just seemed to be missing. Maybe I’m too analytical. « Hide Spoiler

For the first time, I’m using .5 of a star. I went over and over what I would rate this book for hours, and ultimately, I didn’t like it enough for it to be 3 stars but it’s not horrible, so I can’t give it 2 stars.

I think this will appeal to a lot of people (especially if you like books like We Were Liars) but unfortunatly it just didn’t work for me.