Review: Sekret by Lindsay Smith

I had issues with this book. I wanted to love it, and I tried to love it, but I could not. Will explain why, and I will try not to post any spoilers for the book, since it isn't out until April :) Really wanted to read this book because of the summary; as it reminded me a little bit of the books by Elizabeth Wein.

I don't know how to talk about my feelings for this book, because I don't have much positive to say about it. That makes me sad, but it's the truth. I just did not love this book. I didn't hate it either, but yeah. I did not enjoy it. I wanted to, I really did. It took me three days to read this.

My issue with Sekret was that I didn't manage to enjoy the writing. Which really sucked. Because I need to love the writing if I'm going to have any hope of enjoying the book. But I just couldn't in this one. I wasn't able to stop thinking about the way it was written, and it just wasn't for me. But I do think that others will enjoy it. Just not me and my weird ways of reading a book :) But anyway. I didn't only have troubles with the writing. I also had issues connecting to the book. I didn't feel anything for the characters. I might have felt something for Valentin, but then Yulia sort of ruined it with the way she was thinking. Sigh. I wanted to enjoy all the characters, but I just couldn't. Didn't understand them.

The plot in this book is interesting. Not perfect, as I seemed to be confused most of the time and some things were described too much and others too little. I liked that the book was set in Russia, just a bit upset that almost nothing of Russia was shown. That sucked a bit. I was a bit confused about how old the characters were, since no age were given for any of them, except for Yulia. I think. There are a lot of things about this book I wish were better, but I was happy with it. Kind of. No love, though. Sigh.

I just don't know what to say about this book. I'm not going to discuss the plot, because there is a lot to talk about and I feel it would be spoilery. Though, this book focus on psychic teenagers. We get to read about so many characters, too many names for me to remember. I enjoyed a few of those. Most I found to be annoying and a bit badly written. But anyway. I sort of enjoyed reading about their psychic powers. Though I felt like I didn't get to know nearly enough about any of them, which made me a bit sad.

The book is told from the point of view of Yulia. I wish I could say I liked her, but really, I didn't connect with her so I didn't find her that interesting. I didn't enjoy the time jump in the beginning, because so much about who Yulia became was just skipped ahead. I didn't understand why Sergei was so kind of in love with her from the very beginning. It was annoying, as I didn't like him either :p Sigh. I wish I could have loved them all. I wanted to. But yeah. I just didn't and I'm sad about it, but kind of happy as well.

Then there was Valentin. I felt like we didn't get to know enough about him. There is some romance between him and Yulia, but I felt like it wasn't done well enough. And we didn't get to see much of it. Especially not since Yulia kept second-guessing him all the freaking time. It got very annoying. But anyway. I did enjoy reading about Valentin. He was pretty interesting. But not enough for me to enjoy the book. Anyway. That is mostly all I have to say about this book. Others will probably love it, though :)

I have decided to give Sekret a two star rating. Near the ending I considered a three star, but no. It wasn't that good for me. But even though I didn't enjoy this book most of the time, I'm still glad that I read it. Somewhat. I considered giving up on it a few times, but I was interested in seeing how it ended, and that made me continue. I liked the ending for the most part. The romance part was good. But oh, I am curious about what happens next. There must be a sequel. I would read it, I think :)

I'm very grateful to Macmillan Kids and Ksenia for this gorgeous print ARC copy. <3 Thank you so, so much for the chance to read this book early. I'm sorry I didn't love it, but still glad that I read it :)

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