Review/Rant: Forbidden: Discover the Legend, by Tina Smith

Title: Forbidden: Discover the Legend
Author: Tina Smith
Genre: Paranormal
Pub. Date: July 20, 2012

When Lila unwillingly moves to the country town of Shade, she can’t imagine the life-altering events that lie in wait for her. Shade has a curfew and has always been surrounded by myths. A central feature of the town is its famous statue of Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, whose spirit is said to protect the innocent.

Lila falls in with a group of intriguing teenagers with luminescent eyes and soon she is drawn into the shadowlands of fantasy and reality, where destiny collides.

A mysterious local girl, Cresida, warns her to stay away, but Lila is drawn to them like a moth to a flame.

Cresida knows their fatal secret and she is honour-bound to protect those who are endangered. But she underestimates Lila’s passion for the mysterious and charismatic clan of youths. Lila begins to feel a call she cannot ignore. Yet her heart is filled with vulnerable desires that begin to turn the underworld upside down, for both hunter and hunted, as she learns they have been waiting for her…

Inspired by the legend of the mythical femme fatale, Wolf Sirens is an intimate tale of unrequited and forbidden love in the underworld, a masterpiece of romance fantasy. -Goodreads

Putting it concisely: This book was a sloppy, horrible mess.

This book leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I have never read something like this before, and not in a good way. I don't want it to seem like I'm hating on Forbidden: Discover the Legend for the hell of it; it truly is this terrible and it's hard for me to conceal my anger towards this.

First and foremost, I want to put it out there that I was only able to bear about 65% of the book; the rest, I skimmed. I rarely skim books, which just displays how much this was a pain to read.

The Writing
The writing was amateur at best, childish at its worst. Filled with run-on sentences, unorganized paragraphs, and spelling and grammatical errors, I felt like I was reading a story written by a 12-year-old. It made the novel a million times harder to follow, in addition to the confusing plot.

Not only that, but Forbidden was jam-packed with unneeded mental questions the narrator/MC was aiming at herself. It got repetitive and tedious. Sometimes, there were paragraphs consisted entirely of mental questions.

C'mon, all these errors shouldn't be done by an author. It's all Writing 101.

Don't believe me? Here are just a few examples:

"I didn't pry further. I hoped as she had the key, that it wasn't stolen and she didn't seem the type. I wondered who had been pissed off enough to have keyed it. I learnt Giny was short for Giane--even though it was the same length, she told me with a laugh." And that is all in one paragraph, might I add.

"Hers were the deepest brightest blue I had ever seen and we weren't in the sun, but they sparkled."

"I was so pale I was green." Uh-huh. I never thought green would be classified as "pale".

Lila- The Main Character
Moving on to the MC with no personality, Lila. Or, if you consider being a snob as having a personality, I guess you could say she has somewhat of a persona. A shallow one, nonetheless.

Anyway, Lila, who the author wasn't bothered enough to have developed, was a judgmental snob. I like to describe her as a hypocrite, since she goes around judging people before she gets to know them and magically knows all their bad qualities-- qualities that she undeniably possessed.

Now, I want to make it clear that I don't have a problem with flawed heroines. In fact, I prefer reading of those than of Mary-Sues. But her. She is a different story altogether, It was downright irksome to have to be in her head for so many pages. That girl gave me a major headache. *takes ibuprofen*

Here's a quote that displays her judgmental self:

"She had a small gap in her front teeth which gave her more character than she appeared to possess before as she smiled widely at me."

Look who's talking about having no character! Besides this being judgmental and hypocritical, it makes no sense whatsoever.

And another great exhibition of her personality:

"As I gazed at him I unfortunately knew then that I found his friend, Sky, far more attractive, but if he was seconds, then I sure couldn't compromise."

So looks are far more important than personality? How could you be so shallow?

Oh, and my favorite:

"I was decidedly more like Giny, maybe slightly looking I supposed, otherwise he would date her, although he wasn't with Lily or Bianca either, and as far as I could tell they weren't otherwise taken. Perhaps I'd underestimated myself and I liked that thought."

Perhaps you are in dire need of a reality check to fix your shallowness, hon.

"The thought of becoming a werewolf appealed to me, not for Reid or the eternal life, or anything- but the possibility that then I would be beautiful enough for Sky."

I sincerely hope that there aren't actually people like this. I really do.

I won't even go into the under-developed supporting characters. I hate all of them. And I hate the plot, too.

Furthermore, why was Artemis even brought up in the Prologue? I'm really curious. It's not like she was mentioned at all in the rest of the book.

In the past, I have only read one other werewolf book prior to this, and that is Shiver by Maggie Steifvater. While Forbidden has nothing on Shiver, I didn't exactly like Steifvater's novel. So, I've learned my lesson. I won't be reading anything by this author, nor anything on werewolves.

1 star