#REVIEW and #GIVEAWAY: The Blue Effect by Rose Shababy

 

  Blue Brennan is jaded and bitter despite her pinup girl looks and a quick wit. Night after night she scours the Seattle club scene looking for someone or something to fill the emptiness inside. When she meets the mysterious Kasey, her world stops on its axis… literally. He claims she has the ability to control time and stuns her even further when he reveals his own gifts. Blue is inexplicably drawn to Kasey and reluctantly enters his world filled with a new breed of humanity, each with amazing powers of their own. They’re misfits like her, blessed or cursed with powerful abilities, struggling to hide their differences while pitting their powers against injustice. Then the group discovers the existence of a nameless, faceless sociopath with nightmarish powers, and his sights are set on Blue. But Blue and her unique gifts are not only his target, they are also the key to defeating him and saving them all. Now she must race against the clock to harness her own powers and save her new friends. Can she be more than a renegade? Can she be a hero too?

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RATING: 3 stars

Review: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Blue is coasting through life, without ambition, without a family, having been through a pretty crappy childhood. During early adulthood, she's gone from crappy job to crappy job, getting the jobs based only on her looks. Suddenly she meets Kasey, and just as suddenly, she can stop time, and she is introduced to a band  of misfits just like herself who have varied and unique "abilities". 

The writing itself is good. In the beginning, I kept swinging from pity for Blue, to annoyance that she would waste her life away, to hope that she could find a place that she would fit in and use her abilities for good. That's all anyone really needs, a way to use their talents for the greater good.

I found the dialogue to be rather choppy and difficult to get into. The characters seemed to be kind of flat for me, a little too two dimensional. I wasn't able to really dig deeply into Blue as I would have liked to. The storyline was a great premise, but it could have been so much better of the characters were more fleshed out.

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The best debut novel I’ve read in years. Blue is the type of unique, honest, protagonist usually only experienced in Stephen King novels. The Blue Effect was part Fight Club, part X-Men and sucked me in from the very first chapter to the very last word. Powerfully written with a compelling plot and wicked antagonist. Couldn’t ask for anything more – except the sequel! – Robert Dugoni, NY Times Best Selling Author – My Sister’s Grave

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About the author:

Rose Shababy and her family reside in eastern Washington State. Rose grew up in the Northwest but swears she’s going to move to warmer climates someday. She’s claimed this for over 20 years, however, and has yet to move more than 75 miles away from her mother. Rose has a deep love of all things Star Trek and yearns to travel the heavens, as well as an intense desire to be bitten by a radioactive spider. Unfortunately she sucks at science and math so she hasn’t been able bring her dreams to life, instead living vicariously through books, comics, television and film. She hopes to someday make a million dollars so she can afford to buy her way to the international space station, but she’d settle for being able to fly around the world and leap tall buildings in a single bound. Rose also loves to cook and worked for years in a gourmet Italian grocery and deli where she learned to hone her skills. She prepares culinary masterpieces for her family, but fervently wishes the dishes would wash themselves. Especially now that her dishwashers/children are nearly grown and only one still lives at home. Rose likes to use her free time wisely. For instance, she likes to daydream, will often read for hours until she falls asleep on the couch with an electric blanket and a warm tabby cat curled up on her hip, as well as spending cozy weekend days watching Syfy movies like Sharknado and Mega Piranha with her husband. If Rose were a cartoon animal, she’d prefer to be a wise old owl or a sleek and sexy jaguar, but in reality she’d probably be a myopic mole with coke-bottle glasses.


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