The Summoning by Kelly Armstrong
Published: July 1st, 2018
Pages: 390
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Goodreads Blurb:
“My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.
All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don't even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost - and the ghost saw me.
Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won't leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a "special home" for troubled teens. Yet the home isn't what it seems. Don't tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It's up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House... before its skeletons come back to haunt me.”
I’m going to be perfectly honest here. I don’t know why I like this book so much, as objectively it’s not good (its rather cliche). It could be that I read it for the first time when I was 16 and every time I go back to it, I feel like I’m back in high school or something. I don’t know. But nonetheless, I love it.
This is Kelly Armstrong’s first endeavour into YA novels. It’s obvious that she can write a page turner and the characters are likeable. The writing is good, and compared to a lot of YA novels it’s really good. The characters seem their age and Chloe’s voice seems like a typical 15 years old.
My complaints about the novel, is it’s a little cliché. We have Chloe who’s 15 and obviously pretty, but she’s a bit of a Mary Sue who all the boys are constantly trying to save. She doesn’t realize she’s pretty though. Her mom is dead and her dad is never around. We have Tori, the insecure bitchy girl. And there’s a love triangle (shocker right). They are adopted brothers that are complete opposites. Simon is perfect and Derrick is apparently hideous, smart and rude. There is an evil corporation that they have to get away from.
I do like this book though. It was entertaining and I do go back to it in the event of a book hangover. It’s a simple read but it’s good to break up longer, more complex fantasy reads. The incorporation of different fantasy races was well done and the discovery of the powers was interesting. At the time I read this novel (and actually since) I haven’t encountered many Necromancers. Thus, making Chloe’s power different. There was also Shamans, vampires, witches, wizards, and more that get discovered in the next trilogies.
4 wine glasses out of 5. I’d recommend it to anyone who is in high school, as it is geared for this age group and it’s one of the better ones for this age group. If you like reading YA fantasies I’d recommend it to adults too.
Cheers, Jen