Friday 23 June 2017

Review: Passenger (Passenger #1) by Alexandra Bracken

Title: Passenger
Author: Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 4 hearts
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Pub. date: January 5th 2016
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
SynopsisPassage, n.
i. A brief section of music composed of a series of notes and flourishes.
ii. A journey by water; a voyage.
iii. The transition from one place to another, across space and time.

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them—whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home... forever. (synopsis from Goodreads)

I wanted to love this book. I really did. And I enjoyed reading it, it was great. There was just something missing, that something that brings a book from simply ‘great’ to ‘amazing’. It was hard to get into, but I liked the characters and the time-travelling. All in all, it was good, it was just a bit disappointing because I had such high expectations.

   I really liked Etta.

   Etta gets thrown into a really difficult situation very suddenly, and she deals with it fairly well. It’s pretty obvious from the start that she won’t just fold and let others dictate her actions. From the moment she ends up on a ship year 1776, she fights, be it for her life or for what she believes in or for the people she cares about. I really liked reading about her.

   I loved Nicholas!

   Nicholas Carter… Where to even begin? Nicholas is protective, willing to do anything to keep the people he cares about safe, even if it means making them hate him, or getting hurt himself. He’s learned to take care of himself, because his family never really cared about him. Nicholas really goes through a journey through this book (both literally and figuratively). He changes a lot, and I loved seeing it.

   The romance was great.

   I loved watching Nicholas and Etta fall in love. I realize now that it took a few days for them to fall in love, but it didn’t matter, because it happened over the course of the book, and it felt like longer. So much happened, they went through so much together, and I loved to see how, in the end, it made them stronger.

   The plot was a bit slow.

   It took a while to really get into the book, but once they were in New York, things started happening, and got interesting, and after that, it was impossible to put down. And I love reading about time-travelling, so this was the perfect book for me. I think the author made it a bit too complicated at times, which made it hard to follow sometimes, but at the same time, I liked that she made it complicated, that she had an explanation about time-travelling. In most books I’ve read about it, there hasn’t really been an explanation, and I liked how Bracken weaved history into the plot.


   All in all, Passenger is definitely a must-read. With interesting, layered characters, an original plot, and slow-burning romance, Passenger is a book you don’t want to miss.

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I receive some books from authors, publishers and third party sites (such as Netgalley). This does in no way affect my opinion, and all thoughts expressed on this blog are unbiased and my own. I do not get compensated in any way or form.