Review of Of Scars And Stardust by Andrea Hannah

Format: eBook
Genres: contemporary, mystery, romance,
Pages: 336
Publisher: Flux
Release Date: 08/10/2014
Find The Author: Website ¦ Twitter
Abe Books ¦ Book Depository ¦ Goodreads

After her little sister mysteriously vanishes, seventeen-year-old Claire Graham has a choice to make: stay snug in her little corner of Manhattan with her dropout boyfriend, or go back to Ohio to face the hometown tragedy she's been dying to leave behind.

But the memories of that night still haunt her in the city, and as hard as she tries to forget what her psychiatrist calls her "delusions," Claire can't seem to escape the wolf's eyes or the blood-speckled snow. Delusion or reality, Claire knows she has to hold true to the most important promise she's ever made: to keep Ella safe. She must return to her sleepy hometown in order to find Ella and keep her hallucinations at bay before they strike again. But time is quickly running out, and as Ella's trail grows fainter, the wolves are becoming startlingly real.

Now Claire must deal with her attraction to Grant, the soft-spoken boy from her past that may hold the secret to solving her sister's disappearance, while following the clues that Ella left for only her to find. Through a series of cryptic diary entries, Claire must unlock the keys to Ella's past—and her own—in order to stop another tragedy in the making, while realizing that not all things that are lost are meant to be found.

If you're after a great mystery, the opening chapters of Of Stars And Stardust will completely suck you in - Claire goes to a party that's supposed to be a birthday party organised by her friend, and she's only interested in going to see Grant, a guy she has a crush on. But Grant doesn't arrive and Ella does, Claire's younger sister. Drunk, she tells Ella to go home and it's not until morning that Claire realises her sister never came home.

This is a brutal, bloody story that packs a punch, but left me wanting - a decent story. There's only so much blood and violence you can add to a book without seeming to have any idea where you're going with it and I really felt like the author didn't have a clue. After we find Ella, the book switches to a few years later and slowly goes downhill from there.

Claire has to come back home, for reasons unknown (to me), to help find her sister. Ella's disappeared and no-one seems to have a clue where to even start and I don't actually remember anyone looking for her either, other than Claire. Claire's a hard character to love, mainly because she's constantly rambling on about how these wolves must have her sister and she mustn't have anything cherry scented because they like that.

The middle was slow, but the ending was just abysmal. There were far too many ideas just thrown at the wall and nothing stuck. The last few lines were so bizarre I was just left dumbstruck that this was even published. I have no idea what was going on for the most part and on top of that, a lot of the ending had that 'so this happened' mentality of shoving everything into one chapter to tie loose ends up.

This could have been a great book and it's certainly very unique. However, I'm not a fan of throwing stars at something just because it's a unique concept. It would have received just one star, however I loved Ella and the opening chapters were really amazing (I even cried a little), so it gets upgraded to two.