Inescapable by Amy A. Bartol

Title: Inescapable

Series: Premonition

Author: Amy A. Bartol

Length: 6789 Kindle units

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Plot

Evie is starting her first semester of college, and things seem to be going relatively well. Sure, the cafeteria food sucks, but she’s made friends, joined a field hockey team, and met a boy who just may be her soulmate. The only downside is Reed, a sophomore who hates her on sight. Which is too bad, because he might be the only person who can tell Evie about the strange things that are about to start happening in her life…

 

The Good

One test I use to determine how much I like a book is how much I think about it when I’m not reading it. Some books I enjoy while I’m reading them, but two days later I can’t even remember what they’re about. Inescapable, on the other hand, stuck with me. While I was at work, I found myself thinking about the characters and wanted to read more. Even now as I look back at a few things to write the review, I get sucked in and want to read more. It’s what I like to call “book crack,” basically because its so addictive that you can’t stop reading it even if it’s bad for you.

The book had a lot of really strong characters, both the stars and the side characters. I think my favorites were Buns and Brownie, the girls from Evie’s dorm who convince her to join the field hockey team and get her involved in campus pranks. They’re just the right level of quirky and are always there for Evie when things don’t go her way, as they so frequently don’t, Buns and Brownie are there with a cheerful “sweetie” and a helping hand.

The Bad

If Jackson of the Peachville High Demons series is my favorite boy I have blogged about, then Russell of the Premonition series is definitely my least favorite. He has a southern accent that is apparently so strong that it needs to be transcribed, which in and of itself isn’t bad. However, it is accompanied by other unpleasant characteristics, like a domineering attitude and the need to “protect” Evie by confronting whoever is mean to her, even if she indicates that she is perfectly capable of handling it.

Now, I admit that I am particularly sensitive to this kind of thing, but the fact that Russell is put up as soulmate material makes me feel like the book encourages traditional gender roles to an unnecessarily strong degree. There is one point where Reed indicates that he could never fall in love with another angel because they are not properly “soft” and womanly, which offended me a little bit. The book isn’t Piers Anthony bad in its sexism, but there is enough of it there to make me vaguely uncomfortable at times.

The Romance

Fortunately for all concerned, Russell being Evie’s soulmate is not quite as dire a prospect as it could be. (Because, seriously, if Russell were my soulmate, I’d be begging God for a do-over.) Were Evie fully human, she would be content to be with Russell forever, but since she isn’t, she is denied such a human happy ending. Which is good in that it allows her some choice, though I suppose that it’s also kind of bad because she ends up even more obsessed with Reed than she would have been with Russell. But, then, Reed is so much more worthy of the attention that I can’t bring myself to be too upset.

Sometimes when I’m bored or when I have it shoved in my face, I like to analyze why boys in novels are shirtless. Like, did they need to take their shirt off to fashion makeshift bandages for our bleeding heroine? Or are they simply engaging in gratuitous shirtlessness? Inescapable provided plenty of opportunity for shirt-presence analysis. At first, it seems completely random that Reed keeps appearing on Evie’s fire escape with no shirt on. But! We then find out that he has wings, and he had been flying up to her window, so the bare-chestedness was functional. Except after we know about the wings, he keeps unfurling them at inopportune times, ripping his shirt off in the process, which is both gratuitous and wasteful. I mean, come on, Reed. We know you’ve got piles of money, but do you need to throw it and your chiseled abs into our face at the same time? I don’t think so.

Will I read more?

I have already purchased the second one and read the end of it. (Yes, I read the ends of books first. Well, not always first but generally before I get there chronologically. Endings are important to me, and knowing what is going to happen enhances my reading experience. No doubt some of you are horribly appalled by this, but all I can say is that reading is a personal experience that we all enjoy in our own way.) I plan to get back to it and read the whole thing within the next couple of weeks. After all, sequel Tuesday does not populate itself.

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