Review: Borrowing Abbey Grace by Kelly Green

Book: Borrowing Abbey Grace by Kelly Green
Series: The Shadow #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy  / Young Adult
Buy A Copy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Available Formats: Ebook
Publication Date: October 17, 2011
First Sentence: "The first thing that I realized when I woke upin the back of the van was that I had noidea at all how I'd arrived in the back of a van."
How Did I Get This Book: From Author, For Review
Description: When Abby Grace wakes up in the back of a van, she has no idea who she is, how she got there, or why anyone would want to kidnap her. After escaping her masked captors, she hurries home, only to discover that she unknowingly left her younger brother behind in the van. Unable to answer the police’s questions with her memories gone, she retreats to the safety of her bedroom where she tries to reconstruct her life. Just as she is settling into the belief that things will one day return to normal, she looks in the mirror—and sees a stranger’s face.
As Abby learns next, she has become a Shadow, sent to inhabit the lives of strangers in trouble. With nothing to go on except the vague hints of her cute but maddening Guardian, a 19th century ghostly teenager named Will, Abby sets out to rescue the missing brother. But she will need all of her intelligence, fearlessness, and wit, because if she fails to find him in time, she will remain trapped in this unfamiliar body forever.

In Borrowing Abbey Grace, Green creates an incredibly intriguing setup that will keep readers interested and coming back for more. You see, Abbey is a Shadow. When someone ‘borrows’ Abbey Grace, she takes over their body and solves whatever problem they have. This time, Abbey get’s placed in the body of Brooke, a girl who was recently kidnapped. Abbey has to face the challenge discovering who kidnapped her and finding Brooke’s little brother.

Isn’t that great? What this tells me is that Green will always have somewhere new and exciting to take the book. We will always have Abbey, but everything around her will change.

Green packs a great sense of suspense into the plot. There is a lot of build up, but I was a bit let down by the ending. It was certainly a surprise ending, but for me, it wasn’t very satisfying. I wanted more from the book. The storyline presents a number of great questions about Abbey and her past, but it doesn’t answer any of them.

Abbey is a great character. She is strong, likable and has no problem carrying the storyline along. She’s got spunk and sass and is quite the little spitfire.

This was a quick, short read, but it certainly packs a lot of potential. I wasn’t a huge fan of the storyline this time around, but I loved Abbey. She has the whole Veronica Mars vibe going on, which is always a hit with me. I look forward to reading the next installments of the series and seeing what trouble Abbey finds herself in next time. I just hope that her storyline is touched on a bit more. I have so many questions about her that were completely left open.

 

Favorite Quotes:

Apparently, Brooke's Dad-my dad?- was not the sort of father that allowed  a day for mental recuperation after a person has been kidnapped.

Who eats soup by themselves?

Leo's stare had given me the same twisting feeling in the pit of my stomach that Ms. Peterson had when she'd known about me jumping out of the van. Naturally, I thought it best to follow him home.

I threw open the linen closet in the hallway: just sheets and towels that smelled like mountain streams and lilacs. No murderous freshman.

I didn't want him to think I was weak, but he was the only person in the whole world who had any idea of the real predicament I was in, and that made him, at the moment, my best friend, even though he was about as comforting as a catcus.