Meridian

Meridian by Amber Kizer
Published: August 11, 2009 by Delacorte

    Sixteen-year-old Meridian has been surrounded by death ever since she can remember. As a child, insects, mice, and salamanders would burrow into her bedclothes and die. At her elementary school, she was blamed for a classmate's tragic accident. And on her sixteenth birthday, a car crashes in front of her family home - and Meridian's body explodes in pain.

Before she can fully recover, Meridian is told that she's a danger to her family and hustled off to her great-aunt's house in Revelation, Colorado. It's there that she learns that she is Fenestra - the half-angel, half-human link between the living and the dead. But Meridian and her sworn protector and love, Tens, face great danger from the Aternocti, a band of dark forces who capture vulnerable souls on the brink of death and cause chaos. 

I am so torn on this book! It had a great balance of dark and paranormal mixed with light and humorous, but some things just bothered me about the story. I don't think I've ever wanted to like a book more than I did, but it happened with this one. 

• Meridian - This girl is pretty normal...you know, as far as paranormal half-humans go, and that made the book very enjoyable. Meridian has normal reactions to everything that's going on with her and that is so important in a paranormal setting.
• writing - I was sucked into the book as soon as the setup portion was over and the real story began. The atmosphere created was a great balance between ominous and light-hearted, and I loved the characters...well, most of the characters. Auntie was a little strange. Overall, I found myself wanting to like this book more than I did because it was going in a promising direction... until the excitement tapered off about halfway in. 
• Tens - Alright, so I admit that it's rare for me to not like the love interest. That said, I liked Tens a lot, until he and Meridian started to become an item. As soon as they both admitted they were interested in each other, Meridian pretty much decided she was in love forever. I think it ties in with how weird I found the Protector/lover overlap...

• Protector = lover? - Ok, so I guess all the Fenestras are women, and some of them have Protectors, who are apparently all males. So, Meridian pretty much insta-loves this guy she's just met, but that's ok because she's supposed to. Uh, no. Meridian only briefly thinks about this once, her Auntie almost pushes it, and who knows what Tens thinks about all of it. It comes off as very strange to me. 
• Aternocti - There was a lot of talk about these supposedly horrible Aternocti bad guys, but nothing having to do with them directly really happens until a very brief scene near the end of the book. It felt like a bunch of buildup for the shortest actual conflict. 
• Fenestra - Explanation scenes always bug me. They are my pet peeve about most paranormal books because the action grinds to a halt while a relative or teacher or Yoda lays out the details of whichever supernatural thing we're dealing with in the book. This book suffers from Explanation Scene Syndrome. They have a talk about what a Fenestra is, questions are asked, questions are answered in less than helpful ways...it's very formulaic. I also found the visualization of what a Fenestra does to be a little strange. It felt very removed from the rest of the book, even though I guess it was supposed to be on a different plane of existence. It was just hard to adjust between these scenes and the rest of the book. 

• The door creaked open. A musty cloud of cold air hit my face and shivers broke down my body. Spiderwebs hung like tinsel from the ceiling, and a thick coat of dust made my nose twitch. I tried the light switch. A lamp emitted a soft glow, one made even dimmer by the dense layer of dust on the shade.      - pg. 137
• "You're not afraid of being around me?" I asked Tens.   "Why would I be?"    "People die around me." Okay, stating the obvious here.      "I'm not scared. Although you did just massacre a perfectly good cup of tea."     - pg. 197    Meridian + Tens

3 Robots

A different paranormal than the norm, with a great tone, but I wish it had lived up to its potential.

Acquired: swapped for on swap.com