Review: Indigo Awakening

INDIGO AWAKENING
The Hunted #1
Jordan Dane
Paranormal Young Adult
HarlequinTEEN
Available now
Source: eBook from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Because of what you are, the Believers will hunt you down.

Voices told Lucas Darby to run. Voices no one else can hear. He’s warned his sister not to look for him, but Rayne refuses to let her troubled brother vanish on the streets of LA. In her desperate search, she meets Gabriel Stewart, a runaway with mysterious powers and far too many secrets. Rayne can’t explain her crazy need to trust the strange yet compelling boy—to touch him—to protect him even though he scares her.

A fanatical church secretly hunts psychic kids—gifted “Indigo” teens feared to be the next evolution of mankind—for reasons only “the Believers” know. Now Rayne’s only hope is Gabe, who is haunted by an awakening power—a force darker than either of them imagine—that could doom them all.

MY THOUGHTS
With an intriguing premise, Indigo Awakening pulls us quickly into a world nearly identical to our own save for one key element, bypassing a slow build up and thrusting us directly into the action as young Lucas escapes the confines of a mental health facility. Though the plot is not an altogether unique one, the concept of evolutionary advancement in the form of supernatural abilities in young kids is certainly fascinating, our minds unable to help wondering if perhaps somewhere in the world, behind closed doors or hidden away so as to not be exposed, such people and gifts exist, biding their time before they change the world as we know it.

Though conceptually an engrossing tale, we find ourselves a touch less enthused with regard to the myriad of characters, the large cast constantly jostling one another for our attention as we bounce back and forth between seven or eight of them. We get a tiny piece of each of their stories before moving on to the next person, asking ourselves all the while if that last brief interlude was truly necessary to the overall plot. Reading Indigo Awakening is a bit like standing just a few inches from a large stained glass window–the characters an indistinct blur of color, light, and shadow that has us aching to take a few step backs so we can see how everything fits together to create a unified image. Instead we remain pressed up close, feeling like we have little pieces of each person, but no real context to help us figure out who they are individually or how they relate to the larger whole.

Our time spent with secondary and tertiary characters limits our time with protagonists Rayne and Gabriel, and as a result, our investment in their romance is equally limited, their time together lacking the desired tension because we simply aren’t granted access to the moments where the relationship can truly build and develop in complexity. Perhaps the most poignant relationship is not Rayne and Gabriel at all, but rather that of Raphael and a little boy named Benny, the brotherly bond between them the one connection that truly tugs at our heartstrings and ensures an emotional link to the story itself.

Overall, Indigo Awakening presents a setup that never fails to pique our curiosity, our interest in the various young people and their gifts in particular enough to keep us turning the pages, however, the repeated short jumps between one character’s story and the next keeps us from really settling in. We’re constantly on the move, and for those readers like me who love to spend time getting to know the characters on whose journeys I’m piggybacking, this is a bit of a trying tale.

Rating: 3/5
 

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.