Review | 'Arise'

Arise 
Tara Hudson
eBook (Kindle Fire)
HarperTeen
Four stars | B+



From Goodreads:

Amelia—still caught between life and death—must fight for every moment of her relationship with the human boy Joshua. They can hardly even kiss without Amelia accidentally dematerializing. Looking for answers, they go to visit some of Joshua’s Seer relatives in New Orleans. But even in a city so famously steeped in the supernatural, Amelia ends up with more questions than answers…and becomes increasingly convinced that she and Joshua can never have a future together.Wandering through the French Quarter, Amelia meets other in-between ghosts, and begins to seriously consider joining them. And then she meets Gabrielle. Somehow, against impossible odds, Gaby has found a way to live a sort of half-life...a half-life for which Amelia would pay any price. Torn between two worlds, Amelia must choose carefully, before the evil spirits of the netherworld choose for her.


The first part of this review will be absolutely spoiler-free, but I will designate a paragraph at the very end for spoiler-filled goodness. Sound good to you? Sounds good to me. Arise is the sequel to Hereafter, so I recommend you have read the first book in order to read, and comprehend, this review. 
We'll start right off with the writing, because frankly, that's what's on my mind most about this book. I thought that Hudson's writing really improved from the last book, and I was not a huge fan of her writing in Hereafter at all. I thought that she was able to keep my attention better in this book better than she was able to in the first book. That said, I still think Tara Hudson needs to improve on her writing the most out of anything. It's very loose and I'm easily distracted from her writing, which is really sad, because I want to love this series, but I can't. The book was fast-paced, and I started it at 9pm Monday night and finished it at 11am the next morning, obviously with a break for sleeping in there.
Have you been aching to reread New Moon? Well, look no further, because here it is. The plot of this book was very New Moon-ish, but with the gender roles reversed, which I'll discuss more in the spoiler section. I think the fast-pacing really affected my perception of what was going on, because I feel like so many different things were happening without any warning, and it got a bit confusing. The plot centers around Amelia and Joshua traveling to Nola in order to meet the latter's Seer family, and then Amelia is conflicted about her future with Joshua and his safety, and this is where I think the plot trips up on itself. Amelia made a lot of weird, non-backed up decisions that I felt had no place in the book. The plot lacked originality, and I was tired of the whole graveyard feel of everything, and it was way too predictable. Some things I liked about the plot would include a lot of Amelia's internal thinking, even though I didn't get it, I thought it was very realistic to Amelia's character and to the plot development. I thought the plot developed well, but not nearly as good as I had hoped for, and not as poorly as Hereafter. It really need a lot more fluency and cohesiveness.
As far as characterization goes in this book, I think Amelia grows a lot in this book (for her character), which I really appreciated. The scenario that Amelia is placed in requires a lot of growth and change, and we didn't get that in Hereafter, but we did get it in Arise. She definitely went from being the timid, socially secluded girl she was at the beginning of Hereafter, to this curious, bold (perhaps not courageous, but bold) lady in Arise. I didn't see a lot of development from Joshua, who is practically the only other character in this book. There was Gabrielle and Alex, but there wasn't much development from them (especially since this was their first appearance) as their was exposition being revealed on their characters, and I think that their characters can develop from start to finish in the next book now that we know many characters' true colors. 

THE FOLLOWING SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ARISE

When the first chapter came around, I was really beginning to notice the drastic change in Tara Hudson's writing, and I was really pleased. And then I got to the second chapter. BAM! Sex scene. Okay, so it wasn't a sex scene, but a heavy makeout session, and Amelia constantly refers to her dress going to an "inappropriate height" on her thighs. It did nothing to the plot besides contrast to the ending, when Amelia can no longer touch Joshua. I mean they never even touch again in the story, so it was just so random and awkwardly intense. I hate to say this, but Tara Hudson could learn from Stephenie Meyer when it comes to adding subtlety to your characters' intimate scenes--see Breaking Dawn's honeymoon scene (Meyer doesn't describe the scene, only its aftermath). I mentioned that I would bring up the New Moon-ity of this book, and I will do so now. If you've read, or seen, the second Twilight installment, you'll know that Edward  Cullen leaves Bella Swan "for her safety." In this book, Amelia (in my opinion, very suddenly) leaves Joshua "for his safety." The difference between Twilight and this book, though, is that we do not see inside Edward's thought process, so we are left to infer that he had been contemplating this thought for a while. However, in Arise, where we do see the protagonists's thoughts, I didn't see her leaving of Joshua coming, and there's no excuse for that. There should have been more internal conflict with Amelia's decisions, but there wasn't, so when she left him, I was so confused. I mean, they were just getting it on at the beginning of the book, and her motivations for leaving (which were basically to "think things over" about her offer by Gabrielle) were stupid and pointless. BOO, AMELIA, BOO. I can't even put my anger for that section of the book into a coherent thought. I don't like Twilight, but Edward had good reasons for leaving, but Amelia didn't. Hudson did not provide enough internal struggles and NO thinking-over of the idea. Ugh. As far as predictability goes, I just knew that one of the new kids that Amelia meets would have to be a villain, otherwise there wasn't going to be a villain, which I actually would have preferred. 

I'm being very generous giving this book a four stars, and I suppose it's just because most of my nitpicks were just issues with the logic and common sense of the book, so...it's just so frustrating. The third, and final, book in this series, Elegy, will be released next year.