Title: Awakened
Author: Ciara Duggan
Pub. Date: September 7, 2021
Rating: 2.5

This will be a short spoiler free review. Thank you to NetGalley and Parliament House for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to really love it. Part of me did, since I threw me back to the kind of YA I read while in high school. It gave me LJ Smith (Vampire Diaries), Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl vibes. But my biggest complaint is that it wasn’t long enough.

While I can appreciate a short book – since the fantasy I tend to read now is super long – 288 pages is really short and it doesn’t give much time for tension and feelings to build. It wasn’t a bad book, but I didn’t really care about what was happening. Too much was happening too quickly for me to feel much of anything.
I have a feeling I would have loved this book if it had been longer, if the MC hadn’t been so quick to accept her “truth” or if the relationship between her and the love interest hadn’t been instantaneous. Yes, I know it’s because of reincarnation – which by the way, is another trope I love – but, like, Hannah was so damn quick to just accept her new lot in life. And I just didn’t enjoy that. Callan seems nice, but again, we don’t really get much, and therefore I don’t really care about him.

I was so looking forward to this book from the minute I saw the first ad for it on my Insta feed. I’m bummed it didn’t live up to my expectations, but I am curious to see what Duggan writes next.

Awakened follows college freshmen Hannah as she enters a world full of magic. Her parents died in a car accident and she feels an immense amount of guilt as the sole survivor. Hannah must deal with overcoming her grief and understanding her role in a magical world while simultaneously navigating love.

I tried to be very open minded while reading this book. I wanted to have fun and enjoy a trope-filled young adult fantasy. However, Awakened is full of cliches and bad writing. Awakened’s plot makes virtually no sense, and none of its magical components are explained. The tropes used are not fun but instead feel extremely lazy. The romance is also very hard to root for and includes a pointless love triangle. I could see this book potentially working for a middle schooler who is getting into reading, but for an avid reader of any age it does not stand a chance.

This story was everything I needed and more. Brilliant. I will admit, I was immediately drawn into the book by it's lovely cover, but it was Duggan's writing that kept me hooked. Don't walk, run to get this book!!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, I'm just going to jump right in.

Awakened started out GREAT. I mean I was hooked, ready for this adventure, and was really excited because the last few books I'd read ended up getting DNF'd.

So, I needed a gripping story that would suck me in and Awakened seemed just like what I needed. It started out like it too, but then the deeper I read into the book the more that grip on my attention just started slipping until I just didn't care about it anymore.

Now, this isn't a bad book. I think if I were younger, I would have enjoyed this more. The writing is good and the characters were amazing. It was the pacing that just... didn't do good for me.

Like, this book spans a whole week and maybe a few days. I honestly think if this book spanned a larger amount of time and things didn't happen so quickly, where it was kind of like whiplash, this would have been an amazing book. It just really needed more... time within the pages.

To conclude this, I'm giving this book three stars. This is because it was just meh for me. I didn't hate it but didn't love it either.

I'm torn regarding this novel. First off, the cover is beautiful and was the reason I initially clicked the title. Second, the premise of the novel is awesome and sealed the deal for me to pick up and read. And third, the comparison novels set the bar HIGH. That being said, I'm not totally sold on the execution. Hannah, our main character, is revealed as a troubled young woman embarking on a new adventure in college. She lost her parents when she was young during an accident, and carries survivors' guilt with her wherever she goes. Perfect starting point with a tragic character with SO much room for growth.

The first few chapters had me flipping pages quickly into the dark of night as we nestle ourselves into the world the author, Ciara Duggan has created for us. The suspense was being built beautifully. We were meeting characters slowly, learning who they were, seeing Hannah start to possibly come out of this shell the narrator tells us she has been hiding in for most of her life. We connect with Hannah; we see the difficulty she has making connections with those around her; but her want/need to make those connections is equally as powerful in getting us connected to her.

We meet a love interest, we feel weirdness around a particular stretch of beach, and then find ourselves starting to tease the edges of occult through Hannah's courses at college, her research, her own weirdness. Perfect.

But then, the story seems to accelerate too quickly. 60% of the book goes by in about two days, with the remain 30% occurring in one; and by the end Hannah is in love with someone she just met. The suspense gets lost in the rushing, and I did have to force myself to continue reading through the middle. I loved the beginning so much though, and I didn't want to give up on the story.

But the main story line was jumpy and erratic—and in a few instances, the story didn’t make sense or was way too easy. The development of the magical world was a little lackluster, I wanted to know more of the history, the battle between light and dark – not just the answers to Hannah's quest. There were some plot holes that I think need refining, maybe even a developmental edit, because the holes break down the story's integrity; and the author did such a fantastic job at developing the first few chapters it's unfair to lose readers in the middle.

This was a slow read for me and I didn't understand why the main character invested time into researching magic at this specific college? There seemed to be backstory missing simply for purposes of why and character motivations. I did enjoy the cast of characters and the college setting because I don't find that too often.

I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I have to say that I enjoy Hannah. She is a character that is herself and she standout from the crowd. She is a young woman who is trying to go to college and dealing with the death of her parents just a year ago. There is magic, school stuff, and a past that just will not rest. She felt a pull that lead her to a cave where a witch is awakened. It is an interest story and a good example of YA Paranormal.

I was totally intrigued by the premise of this book initially but I can definitely understand where much of the criticism is coming from and while i found the magic system and world building amazing, there was something missing.

First things first. I fell under the spell of a pretty cover. I'm a visual person, and as such I have a hard time overlooking the pretty ones. In my defense, though, this book has a very appealing, riveting blurb too. So it wasn't just my shallowness that drove me to pick it up.

If we're talking broad brush strokes, the book was ok. The overall story structure was fine, the plot was interesting enough, I didn't hate the characters and I found no SPaG issues. I think tweens would find this book very much to their liking.

However, I've long since grown out of my tween years, and I don't think this book is particularly suited for an older, more discerning and experienced reader. First, the writing felt VERY clunky. There was a certain amateurish feel to how the sentences were structured. In particular, one thing that kept tripping me up was the recurrent switch of third person narrator types. The fluctuation between omniscient and limited was disconcerting and distracting.

Second, because the book had such a strong juvenile vibe, the few gruesome, violent scenes that made their way into this tale clashed really harshly with the overall mood. Picture a character being killed in a very explicit, somewhat bloody fashion in an animated Disney film. It'd be weird, right? It'd feel out of place.

Third, the characters were a bit flat for my liking. Hannah was a very negative, 'glass-half-empty' kind of girl. Her constant dreary, dejected attitude was quite tiring. The antagonist was your stereotypical bad guy (well, girl, actually) and the love interest was the cliched good-looking guy, slightly tortured, but with a good heart (your garden variety Stefan Salvatore, shall we say, since this book is recommended for fans of L. J. Smith's TVD). I think they all would have benefited from a bit more development.

And that brings me to my last point: I think the author tried to cram too much in too few pages. I think the majority of events even took place within a couple of days. It was all VERY rushed.

Maybe this story would have worked better as a duet, to give the plot more room to breathe, space for characters and events to be more solidly established and properly fleshed out. To dive deeper into the lore of this world and the ins and outs of magic and people capable of wielding it. The rhyming spells were very fun and I enjoyed them, but because the addition of magic got reduced to a few rhymes and supernatural creatures, the book ended up feeling unfinished.

I think Ciara Duggan has the potential to be a great author, but this book in particular just had a very subpar execution.

Conceptually, Awakened was a good story. There is no denying that the storyline was melodramatic enough that it would have made a superb play; the entire story was tell-not-show, which I am sure would translate fantastically to a visual medium. However, it—obviously—was NOT a play, and I found myself questioning it's telling the entire way through.
The protagonist, Hannah, reads like the woefully inexperienced teenager that she is; granted, sometimes she reads markedly younger than a 17-almost-18 year old with a traumatic backstory, but in YA fiction, that is certainly favourable than the other way around.
This was where elements began to fall short.
Perhaps most grating, the treatment of PTSD and anxiety following a traumatic incident was tone-deaf at best, and outright offensive at worst. Though the recurrent sentiment of "that was just my PTSD" was not the most shining depiction, I was willing to go along with it for the sake of much-needed explicit representation in YA fantasy. However, the 180° turn to the sentiment of "it wasn't PTSD, it was never PTSD, it was always magic" felt incredibly erasing to those who do suffer from PTSD following a traumatic incident, and don't simply get to call their diagnosis a super-power and move on with their lives, unchanged.
Given the breadth of history backstory behind each of the characters, they all seemed to feel remarkably flat and two dimensional. Again, had this been presented in a visual medium, their depiction probably would have been sufficient; reading this felt like watching cardboard cutouts be moved around a puppet stage.
This was heightened by the seeming lack of depth to the story. Awakened followed the general plotline of any YA fantasy book, and though predictability is not inherently a negative thing, I struggled to find any elements to set it apart. The protagonist was the most powerful, and the most good and pure of heart. The villain was evil for the sake of being evil because she was just born bad and (have I mentioned this?) LOVED being evil. None of them seemed representative of anything greater, and though sometimes it is nice to read a story that is just for fun and nothing more, I would have enjoyed this far more had there been something—ANYTHING—to separate it from the age-old tale of good vs evil.

This will be short and to the point since I don't enjoy being so negative. Unfortunately I did not care for this book. The cover is gorgeous and I would have picked this up to read based on that alone but I am really into the older YA trend recently of college age characters so that was another plus in the book's favor. But that is where the positives end.

The story felt like it was more an outline of a book than a completely fleshed out story, there were so many plot holes and lack of transitions. The premise of the story was based on magic yet every time magic was brought up it was explained away as being mysterious and not to question it, which to me is lazy writing. The characters were also very surface, I did not feel like I really knew them so I could not connect to them. And there was insta-love that felt very rushed and not realistic. To be fair, I am sure someone else will really love this story, but it was very much so not for me.

Awakened was not what I was expecting and I really liked it. I enjoyed the bad witch / good witch concept and found myself rooting for Hannah. I also thought all the side characters added a lot to the story. This will be popular with fans who enjoy a well-written fantasy story.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Awakened was one of those book that seemed too good to be true. Or maybe it's just because the synopsis completely sucked me in and then the book was just a complete disappointment.

Not that I'm saying I hated the book because I didn't. There are some things that were pretty interesting but never escalated the correct way. Again, it could just be me though.

In it, you will meet Hannah and Callan. She is thrown into a world where there's light and dark magic. Callan is sort of there to help her along the way but it definitely seems like there's a hidden agenda too. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about their romance. It never felt forced to me but I also didn't like it to begin with either.

Also, I'm not going to lie - I had a ton of questions when it came to the magic throughout this book. Which is kind of a depressing in a lot of ways due to never getting the full answer on anything really.

Even after the ending, I'm just kind of left wondering what the exact point of this entire book was. It just kind of seemed like a jumbled up idea that just fizzled out.

In the end, this book definitely had potential to be a lot better than it was. Especially when it came to so many unanswered questions about the magic. I am, however, glad that I got the chance to dive into this book. I wouldn't mind diving into another book written by this author either. She has potential to write a great book and I can't wait to read it one day.

Thanks to Netgalley for the digital arc in exchange for my honest review.

I unfortunately DNFed this book around 35%. I just could not get into it. The main character was bland and I couldn’t connect or care about them. The plot really didn’t feel like much was happening. Just not for me.

2 out of 5 stars

I don't give out two's often or if at all to be honest but this one just didn't do anything for me. There wasn't anything unique about it and I felt like there was a lot of story telling and very little action. It didn't keep me interested. If I hadn't been buddy reading it with some friends I don't know if I'd have finished it.

The story is lack luster, the magic too easy, and the "spells" were a mix of bad one liners. There's also some serious insta-love that happens pretty quick but the romance didn't really keep up. I didn't feel the chemistry between the two of them. I'd have been good with some other kind of relationship outside of the romance that didn't even feel like a romance.

Unfortunately I didn't connect with the characters or the story and the ending wrapped up quick and easy. The best part of this book is the cover.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review.

The description hooked me, and I really wanted to enjoy this book! I did not enjoy the interactions between the male and female MCs and if the male MC said the word "Prithee" one more time I would have screamed.

Absolutely no offense to the author, the story sounds fascinating and I will definitely give other works by this author a try.

This book in 3 words: Compelling. Unique. Lively. 

I am helpless before all things witchy with a modern twist and this book is just that. Awakened is about Hannah, who has magic deep within her she never knew existed, and it's awakened. Chaos ensues once Hannah starts remembering her past and knowing what her current predicament is. 

I liked this book. I thought the premise was fresh and fun with enough variety in some fairly common tropes. The story was easy to read and engaging from start to finish. While Hannah is young, she seems to mature and find herself throughout the pages. 

I do think parts of the story were a bit rushed. This book could've easily been another 100 pages or the start of a stellar series. Needless to say, I wanted more... details, characterization, our main character growing. Nonetheless, if my only complaint is that I wanted more, I consider that a success. 

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I made it about 20% into this book before I sadly had to DNF. The main character was just kind of going with the flow even though weird stuff was happening without questioning anything. Hear a weird voice telling you to recite an incantation? Definitely read it without thinking about it. Things were just happening to her and she wasn't being proactive. She was always just guided by what other people told her today or the feeling she had to do something by persuasion of this book she found, because, plot.

I also didn't enjoy the presumable love interest (Landen). How he spoke was supposed to be enduring and have funny banter with Hannah but it just came across as cocky and kind of annoying.

I kind of went back and forth on what to rate this one. It was a pretty fast read and I totally wanted to read this one from the cover alone. But sadly my enjoyment of this story stopped at the cover. The characters were interesting but the plot itself and the writing style just didn't work for me at all. I thought that the dialogue between characters just felt off and overall it felt like it could have been a lot better if more care would have been taken in the editing process.

This was really good! The fall vibes in the beginning. Ugh it had me hooked. The romance was a little bit instant love but I didn’t mind it. I feel the ending was a little rushed and the magic could of been a little more in depth. Other than that I highly enjoyed this book!