Book Review: Beyond the Eyes by Rebekkah Ford

My Rating:

Book: Beyond the Eyes (Beyond the Eyes  #1)

Author: Rebekkah Ford
Publication date: June 3rd, 2012

Synopsis:
Paige knows evil exists in this world, but she never imagined it would want something from her.

After a ghostly voice whispers a haunting message to seventeen-year-old Paige Reed, Paige’s life takes a nightmarish turn. Unwilling to tell her friends about the supernatural occurrences happening in her life, Paige feels more alone than ever–until she meets Nathan Caswell.
Nathan is not only hot, but seems to peer into Paige’s soul, evoking a magnetic energy between them that cannot be denied. But he’s no ordinary guy. He tracks dark spirits, and becomes alarmed when they set their sights on Paige.
And then there are the two power-hungry dark spirits who believe Paige can find King Solomon’s magical ring for them, because when her father was alive, he was close to finding it. If Paige doesn’t comply with their demands, they’ll kill her.

Paige is forced to dig deep into her father’s past and unearths shocking secrets about him and his bloodline. With the past and present colliding, Paige is only sure about two things in her life: she needs to outwit the dark spirits to stay alive, and she’s completely and helplessly in love with Nathan.

My Review:

I received a copy from the author to read and review in return.

Rebekkah Ford has created a crazy mystical world through her book Beyond the Eyes, with characters who you will come to care for and connect with and an original and exciting plot which will keep your fingers lingering on the pages, aching to read more. There were several things I liked about this book. Clearly this included the hot romance development between the main characters Paige and Nathan, which Rebekkah was not afraid to explicitly write out in thorough detail (*wink wink*); but also the action and the thought put behind the concept of the story. There were however also aspects of the book which unfortunately didn't entirely convince me, however this did not hold me back from frantically swallowing up the pages. Let's go through these points!

The Characters & Plot

The characters in my opinion were quite interesting. I have never read a book with characters who are considered 'goths', wear crazy mohawks and very revealing clothing (exciting!), who go to raves and love listening to blasting metallic-techno music in their cars or in their favorite club. Their way of thinking and attitude was different to characters I was introduced to from other books I've read in the past, hence this was at first a big adjustment for me. For this reason it took a while for me to put myself in their state of mind (due to the fact that you may consider me a complete opposite of a goth). But once I ''warmed up" to the characters traits and their way of doing and acting, the more I came around to increasingly liking them more.

Paige is 17-year old girl who unwillingly receives cryptic premonitions which makes her feel different, unwanted, and a freak. Because of this secret, she feels that she cannot confide in anyone, until she meets Nathan, a mysterious and deadly handsome boy who has an immediate 'electric and magnetic' bond with Paige. The starting stages of the relationship between Paige and Nathan seemed very unrealistic to me. Their immediate attraction and feelings for each other, that Paige instantly knew from the moment she saw Nathan that he was the 'one', was annoyingly rushed. I believe in love at first sight, however their attraction and longing for each other was just unrealistically depicted by the author, which unfortunately personally made me roll me eyes multiple times and laugh at the book rather than giggle and swoon with it. An attribute of Paige which I unfortunately found increasingly painfully annoying was her permanent emotional vulnerable state, her constant 'damsel in distress' mode and her naive being. She easily placed herself too often in predictable dangerous situations, where Nathan always was immediately to the rescue. I do find myself enjoying a case of damsel in distress and 'here-comes-the-handsome-man-to-save-the-daaaay' scenario; however Rebekkah unfortunately wore out this scene too much throughout the book.

I did however veeery much enjoy the pleasant romantic moments between Paige and Nathan, which mostly led to a very hot and spicy read! I tremendously enjoyed the love triangle, or at times maybe even 'love square', between Paige, Nathan, Matt (aka 'the old one') and Brayden. This is often my most sought after aspect of a good book in order to keep the story enticing and teasing; and in my opinion Rebekkah did a splendid job in successfully and realistically portraying this! The surrounding characters (Carrie, Tree, Brayden, Anwar, and of course Mr. Kitty)  were funny, scary, naughty and so much more-- they were right up my street in perfect supporting characters, and they did not bore me one bit!

I found the plot to be very intriguing. I enjoyed the different dangerous characters Paige encountered, and the scenarios she landed her self in were also quite thrilling. Sometimes I found some scenes in the plot a little random, rushed and abrupt, as if Rebekkah almost could not find a good flow or transition on how to introduce the one exciting scenario to the next; but none the less, the essence of the plot was creative and strong enough which consistently pulled me in, in wanting to continue reading more and more.


Writing Style

Rebekkah's writing style throughout was easy, revealing, simplistic, but nothing more to it. I do not completely see this as a negative, but at the same time I did secretly yearn for more 'artistic'-romantic metaphors and perhaps a dash of creative descriptions. Many scripts were written out quite 'flat' and to the point; things were often unnecessarily repeated (i.e. what a character was thinking and immediately thereafter repeating the exact same thought out loud); and there were quite a few grammar and sentence structural mistakes which made me feel this was really still only a draft. I feel that Rebekkah is a very talented author and has much potential, however, I believe she still has much room for development in her writing technique; I did already notice a significant improvement from her sneak peak of the first chapter of her sequence Dark Spirits. 


Thus overall, I feel very privileged and happy to have received a copy of this book personally from Rebekkah Ford. I have definitely enjoyed it and grown attached to the characters and story, thus I will definitely be looking forward to the sequel which I hopefully can read and review in the very near future!