Today, Emily is happy to be a part of the Caterpillar Blog Tour
hosted by YA Bound.
Find the other tour stops here.
Caterpillar (The Metamorphosis Trilogy #1) by Kate Oliver
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Publisher: MAB Books
338 Pages
In a small college town in northern California, a lonely young man is working himself to the bone to solve a sixty-year-old problem ... a stranger with a will of iron and eyes the color of ice is searching for someone he can't identify ... and a girl who loves plants is about to grow roots of her own.
When Cara Gallagher's parents are transferred overseas again, she's off to spend her senior year of high school living with her sister, a graduate student at the famed McNair University. Cara, a girl with a passion for science and an indifference to people, hopes this move will be her first step in claiming the independence she craves. Cara has her future planned down to the letter: her college, her major, her career.
Then she saves Will Mallory's life, and both of their futures are completely rewritten.
The last years of Will's life have been spent shifting from one identity to the next, dodging the FBI, and trying desperately to find a way home. But Will's home is forty-four light years away, and to reach it he'll have to outwit the man who's hunting him--and leave behind the only love he's ever known.
VISIT THE AUTHOR:
FIND THE BOOK:
Review:
This book was very strange. Overall, enjoyable, but definitely not my usual kind of book. I'm still a little befuddled over everything that occurs in the story. While I liked it, it definitely was not love. I almost didn't write this review and asked for a promotional post because it's hard to explain my feeling about this book.
First, I don't like the cover. I know a lot of people don't care about covers and how others feel about them, but for me, a usually judge books by their covers. So reading this went against my usual norm. I expected a little more from it, to be honest. It wasn't awful, but it really needed some tweaks and edits.
The title is Caterpillar. What a weird title, right? But when you read the book, it makes sense. Though, I think a better title might have been "Orchid" because the main character loves plants and orchids are her favorite. This is the story of a girl named Cara and the way she finds love, defeats fear and becomes a woman. Her parents have just moved across the Atlantic ocean, so she moves in with her older sister, Liv, in California. At her sister's college, she meets Will. She's immediately entranced, falls in love, even though he warns her not to, and gets in deep trouble.
Sounds familiar, I know, but the tale is woven with concepts that were totally original. While the plot wasn't unique, the ideas the book revolves around definitely were. Basically, it's about aliens. I'm pretty positive I've only read one other book about aliens in my lifetime and that was The Host by Stephenie Meyer. And while both of these stories are about aliens, they are completely different. And not in a bad way, Caterpillar is just much more subdued and aimed at young adults.
Cara, the main character, was okay. She's not my favorite, but she led a very interesting life. Well, duh… I mean, she's in love with an alien. Besides that she's pretty much a genius, along with her sister and mother. They all have affinities for science. I can't relate to science specialists, and that could be why I didn't love it. There were jokes and metaphors involving things that I learned in high school biology, but couldn't remember for the life of me today. All of those went over my head and just annoyed me. Those anecdotes made it hard to relate and connect with the characters. Liv really loves Cara, but is pretty selfish and hypocritical. Will is… interesting. I guess, I don't really understand him.
I didn't like the point-of-view switch up. Those couple of chapters confused me immensely. Maybe I just skimmed over the point of it, but I was told I was frowning as I read it. The journal entries were neat and I would've liked to see those at the end of every chapter, but point-of-view changes never really sit well with me. I think the story could've done without it.
This really could be a standalone book. I don't know if I will read the next one, because I don't know what the author plans to do with the series next. When she comes out with a blurb and cover for book two, I will decided. This could be the book for you, though. If you love science, drama, romance and young adult novels, you would probably love this!
I received a free e-copy of this novel from the author for a blog tour in exchange for my honest review.
I like the artwork that is the cover, but it doesn't look right as a book cover. IMHO.
ReplyDelete