Book review: Shadow Eyes by Dusty Crabtree

Author: Dusty Crabtree
Title: Shadow Eyes
Series: No
Genre: Young adult, paranormal romance
My copy: E-book received for review by author
Purchase: AMAZON
My rating: 2.5

About the book:
Iris Kohl lives in a world populated by murky shadows that surround, harass, and entice unsuspecting individuals toward evil. But she is the only one who can see them. She’s had this ability to see the shadows, as well as brilliantly glowing light figures, ever since an obscure, tragic incident on her fourteenth birthday three years earlier.
Although she’s learned to cope, the view of her world begins to shift upon the arrival of three mysterious characters. First, a handsome new teacher whose presence scares away shadows; second, a new friend with an awe-inspiring aura; and third, a mysterious and alluring new student whom Iris has a hard time resisting despite already having a boyfriend.
As the shadows invade and terrorize her own life and family, she must ultimately revisit the most horrific event of her life in order to learn her true identity and become the hero she was meant to be.

My Thoughts:

This review will be kind of hard for me to do because I am a bit conflicted as to what to say. This book was not bad but it was very slow in it´s pace. When I had read about 80 % of the book it was like I was still in the beginning. No questions were answered and nothing had really happened in the story.

Right from the start of the book we get to know Iris has been through some big trauma and because of it she sees shadows and light figures. When 80 % of the book is read I still don´t know why she sees shadows or what they really are. I still don´t know what her big trauma is. Actually these are things that are revealed on the last pages of the book. NOT GOOD! Not to me anyway.

But I think my two biggest problem with this book was:

1. Iris is the first main character I´ve read about that I just didn´t like. She was such a coward and so  boneless. She was so afraid of these shadows and the only thing she did was hide from them. And hide from people. She never confronted anyone even though it was obvious they could have answers about the shadows that she needed. She just pretended like they didn´t because she was to afraid of their answers.

2. The underlying message of this book.
(spoilers about the shadows, do not continue reading if you don´t want them)

Shadows are evil. Okey so I can buy that, not a problem.

In this story every teenager has a shadow more or less and when Iris make out with her boyfriend he gets a shadow because he thinks of sex, that´s when I don´t get it anymore. THIS irritates me because to me sex is not evil. Yeah you should wait, I get that, I did. But thoughts about sex is not evil and no one should ever feel ashamed and bad/evil because they have thoughts about the opposite sex. As long as you do not act on them without consent or precaution it´s not evil, it is natural.. Maybe the author didn´t intend to have that message but that´s the message I got. And there´s a lot like that in it. And I am sorry but I just can´t like this book. I was so frustrated about this during the entire time I read it, that spoiled it for me.

This book was just a little to much to me. But I am sure there are people who would like it because it wasn´t badly written it was just the slow pace, the underlying message and mousy Iris that I did not like.