Review of Crashing Eden by Michael Sussman

For one boy and his friends, the path to Paradise comes at a cost—one they may not be prepared to pay.

When a biking accident leaves 17-year-old Joss Kazdan with the ability to hear things others can’t, reality as he knows it begins to unravel.

A world of legends exists beyond the ordinary life he’s always known, and he is transported to the same Paradise he’s studying in World Mythology. But the strange gets even stranger when his new friends build a device that delivers people through the gates of the Garden of Eden.

Now Samael, the Creator God, is furious. As Samael rains down his apocalyptic devastation on the ecstasy-seeking teens, Joss and his companions must find a way to appease Samael—or the world will be destroyed forever.

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Crashing Eden starts off slightly weird and ends up completely bizarre. I've never read a story like it. The main character, Joss, is pretty insane, although he does have his saner moments. He comes back home from Juvie, a few months after his brother, Eli's death and understandably, his parents are still pretty shaken up about it. He never calls his parents 'mom' or 'dad', which I don't remember being explained and his mom, Kathryn, is so weird (she doesn't give a damn about Joss) that she didn't really seem real to me.

The story as a whole is pretty good and memorable. Certainly for the less fussy reader, it's a pretty good read! Unfortunately from a blogger perspective it does have it's flaws. The characters themselves act very strangely, which can be explained by the OM but I would still expect a more extreme reaction to the events unfolding around them.

The end was a little disappointing, in that it suddenly starts talking as if it were a Middle Grade book. There was practically singing and dancing a life lessons at the end. Actually... I think there were life lessons at the end...

The highlight of this book for me was Joss and Callie's relationship. Callie is Joss's little sister and is turning six soon (the OM ends at six), as if the kid hadn't got enough to put up with. You can really see how much Joss loves Callie throughout the book (despite the weirdo psycho scene) and vice versa.

4/5

Received free from Solstice Publishing in exchange for an honest review