ARC Review: Surrender the Sky by Meradeth Houston

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
Expected day of publication: May 2014


Synopsis:


Gabby lives by two unbreakable rules: don’t expose her kind, the Sary, and don’t fall in love—too bad some rules are made to be broken.

When Gabby’s most difficult charge accidentally shoots her in front of a class full of students, the event exposes her carefully hidden identity. She shifts from looking like a normal teen to her secret Sary form, revealing her wings and the existence of her kind—immortals who try to keep people from committing suicide. Her incident attracts the attention of the next leader of the Sary, Jassen, who offers her an impossible bargain: she can keep her wings if she makes amends with those who know the truth. Things get more complicated when a rebel Sary, intent on exposing them to the world, starts interfering with Gabby’s work. And there’s no denying her attraction to Jassen, who is torn between his duties and his heart. With threats at every turn and her immortality on the line, Gabby has to find a way to save the Sary or surrender the sky forever.

My thoughts:

I received an ARC eight days ago from Ms. Houson. I had encountered the book at a cover reveal and it instantly caught my eyes. The story seemed nice and this new race, called the Sary, particularly piqued my attention. I had never heard such beings and if you read earlier posts from my blog, you probably know how much I like new, original ideas. Saries are people who died before their first breath and so they could choose to become Sary, who have wings and help suicidal mortals to overcome their depression.

I loved the idea of the Sary. The idea that people who were not given the opportunity to have a life, are given the opportunity to thwart other people from taking their own. It touched me deeply. Indeed the whole story did. I have noticed that most authors have their particularly strong points. Some of them yields us profound and wonderfully penned landscapes, some of them have especially hilarious lingo and some of them transmit the emotions excellently. Well, Ms Houston's way to describe emotions is just simply outstanding. I'm absolutely sure she can bring tears into everybody's eyes.

This skill perfectly matched with our female protagonist, whose POV the novel is in, and who is a very sentient, nonetheless not tractable, but courageous and ready to make sacrifices for her race and loved ones. With all these traits, she is far from an exquisite Sary, however, in my opinion, she is better than most of them for the same reason.

After a 'little' accident the successor of the Sary leading visits Gabby, who is called Jassen and they fall in love with each other, despite the fact that it's forbidden. He is different than most of the YA guy major characters. He's not snarky but utterly reserved, he does need  help sometimes and he is not afraid to admit it. In one word, he is just as sentient as Gabby. They make a really lovable couple, by the way.

The only thing I regretted, that Marcus only had one scene. He seemed to be a nice guy and I would have been glad to find out more about him, but that's just me, and it wasn't necessary for the plot. Speaking of which, it was full of unexpected twists and it could surprise me, when I expected it to do so the least.

All in all, I adored every word of it, and although I haven't read the prior novels yet, it definitely made me want to do so.

Thank you for reading it, and thank you, dear author, to supply me with a copy.

Rating:

Cover: 5/5
Characters: 4.5/5
Plot: 5/5
Writing (style): 5/5

Overall Rating:     

About the author:

>She has never been a big fan of talking about herself-

>She's from California. This generally means she talk too fast and use "like" a lot.

>She has her doctorate in molecular anthropology. Translation: she sequence dead people's DNA and spend a whole lot of time in a lab, which I love.

>She's been writing since she was 11 years old. It's her hobby, her 
passion, 
and she's so happy to get to share her work!

>Her other passion is teaching. There's nothing more fun than 
getting a classroom of college kids fired up about anthropology!

>If she could have a super-power, it would totally be flying. Which 
is a little strange, because she's terrified of heights.

Follow her on: Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, website, blog