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Iridescent
Things are more than they appear...
Aly Roberts wasn't expecting much out of small town Airyville, North Carolina. She certainly wasn't expecting to get caught up in a conspiracy involving the town's gated community, Lagniappe. The people of Lagniappe are private, and Aly's new friend, Riley Monroe, is certain that they're hiding something. Lagniappe's secrets are dangerous, and uncovering them may just change their lives forever.
Aly Roberts wasn't expecting much out of small town Airyville, North Carolina. She certainly wasn't expecting to get caught up in a conspiracy involving the town's gated community, Lagniappe. The people of Lagniappe are private, and Aly's new friend, Riley Monroe, is certain that they're hiding something. Lagniappe's secrets are dangerous, and uncovering them may just change their lives forever.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 11, 2017
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Kait Spangler
1 book6 followersKait Spangler has had a love for reading and exploring worlds of fantasy for pretty much her entire life. It only made sense for her to take this love and create a story of her own to share with the world. Aside from reading and writing, she enjoys video games and movies - especially those that deal with superheroes. Kait lives in the mountains of Virginia, where she's dreaming up her next story to tell.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 19, 2017
Ey, it's review time again! As always: personal opinion, blah humbug.
Iridescent is a YA contemporary fantasy novel (at least that's how I'd categorize it) with a pinch of dystopia and a smidge of X-Men. It's clean and fun and doesn't swan-dive into the literary cess pool that so many YA novels pump their content from.
What I liked:
- I thought the general concept was intriguing. Not super original, I guess, (teen girl discovers she has supernatural abilities), but still something I'd at least pull off the shelf to take a closer look.
- Leo was a solid character. In my opinion, he has the best/most development. The fact that he'll still be around for book 2 makes me happy!
- Some of the characters' abilities. Namely, Becca's ability. Honestly, I wished we could've seen a lot more of that.
- I love it when book titles are taken directly from passages or key concepts within the story, and Iridescent does just that. Kind of that 'oh, yeah, there it is!' moment.
What didn't work for me:
- I found the writing to be...undercooked? Is that a thing? Don't get me wrong, the book itself was pretty well-polished, some punctuation glitches aside. But there's something hard to describe that great writing has, something that makes it feel like a home-cooked meal (yeah, I'll stick with the metaphor), and Iridescent felt more like convenience food. Uhm...I honestly don't know how else to put it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either...? *quits Goodreads*
- A big chunk of the main conflict was based on a high school breakup two years prior to the events of the story. I don't dig it. Personally, I have a hard time taking high-school-age relationships that seriously in general, but Riley. My dude. Spending two years 'investigating' your ex-girlfriend's fenced neighborhood just because the breakup was weird and abrupt isn't curiosity or intrigue. It's obsession. Go to college, get some savings, then marry a different girl and be happy.
- The pacing just wasn't there for me. This relates to my previous point, but so much of the book was dedicated to the protagonist (first person narrative, btw) rationalizing every choice, thought, and action of hers. As a reader, I can follow the logic behind those fundamentals on my own. Here's what I mean:
- Random character dialog line
- Protagonist's inner interpretation, thought process, and conclusion
- Protagonist's spoken response
That pattern repeated itself on pretty much every page, and I think that if the author had cut out those middle steps, the interior monologuing, the flow of the dialog and the overall pace of the book would've been better. It's not a long book, but it does feel really slow right up until the end.
- Some of the characters' abilities. Whereas Becca's ability was awesome, as mentioned before, most of the others were, in my opinion, either bland or forgettable. Allow me to explain.
- Bland: a.k.a. I've seen it too many times before. Elemental powers, telepathy, stopping time...cool, yes, but also very common in these types of stories.
- Forgettable. This has as much to do with the side characters as with the abilities themselves. Most of the secondary Lagniappe characters didn't have enough screentime for me to remember their names or what their abilities were. Which is a shame, because I bet some of them were super interesting and I honestly just don't remember them.
- This is a problem I've found in quite a few of my recent reads: the key emotional moments just weren't there. I'm a big fan of emotional payoff, and I don't care how long it takes to build up to that (actually, the longer the better, usually). But with Iridescent...I didn't really get much of either? Okay, granted, there weren't THAT many moments with really high stakes or emotional potential, mainly because this is the first book and a lot of it was spent world-building, which is fine. But there were a few moments like those, such as , and I think they could've delivered a much bigger punch if developed more.
- The villains. Disclaimer: I'm VERY hard to satisfy when it comes to villains. Especially when we're dealing with superhero-esque villains. None of the villains in Iridescent were terrible, and was actually pretty interesting, but were too 'classic villain' for my taste.
Overall, I did enjoy the story, and a few of the characters really had me intrigued *cough cough Leo and Becca cough*, but the aforementioned problems I had kept me from going over 3 stars. Kudos and respect to Kait Spangler for all the work and love she poured into this! KEEP DOING THE THING!
Iridescent is a YA contemporary fantasy novel (at least that's how I'd categorize it) with a pinch of dystopia and a smidge of X-Men. It's clean and fun and doesn't swan-dive into the literary cess pool that so many YA novels pump their content from.
What I liked:
- I thought the general concept was intriguing. Not super original, I guess, (teen girl discovers she has supernatural abilities), but still something I'd at least pull off the shelf to take a closer look.
- Leo was a solid character. In my opinion, he has the best/most development. The fact that he'll still be around for book 2 makes me happy!
- Some of the characters' abilities. Namely, Becca's ability. Honestly, I wished we could've seen a lot more of that.
- I love it when book titles are taken directly from passages or key concepts within the story, and Iridescent does just that. Kind of that 'oh, yeah, there it is!' moment.
What didn't work for me:
- I found the writing to be...undercooked? Is that a thing? Don't get me wrong, the book itself was pretty well-polished, some punctuation glitches aside. But there's something hard to describe that great writing has, something that makes it feel like a home-cooked meal (yeah, I'll stick with the metaphor), and Iridescent felt more like convenience food. Uhm...I honestly don't know how else to put it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either...? *quits Goodreads*
- A big chunk of the main conflict was based on a high school breakup two years prior to the events of the story. I don't dig it. Personally, I have a hard time taking high-school-age relationships that seriously in general, but Riley. My dude. Spending two years 'investigating' your ex-girlfriend's fenced neighborhood just because the breakup was weird and abrupt isn't curiosity or intrigue. It's obsession. Go to college, get some savings, then marry a different girl and be happy.
- The pacing just wasn't there for me. This relates to my previous point, but so much of the book was dedicated to the protagonist (first person narrative, btw) rationalizing every choice, thought, and action of hers. As a reader, I can follow the logic behind those fundamentals on my own. Here's what I mean:
- Random character dialog line
- Protagonist's inner interpretation, thought process, and conclusion
- Protagonist's spoken response
That pattern repeated itself on pretty much every page, and I think that if the author had cut out those middle steps, the interior monologuing, the flow of the dialog and the overall pace of the book would've been better. It's not a long book, but it does feel really slow right up until the end.
- Some of the characters' abilities. Whereas Becca's ability was awesome, as mentioned before, most of the others were, in my opinion, either bland or forgettable. Allow me to explain.
- Bland: a.k.a. I've seen it too many times before. Elemental powers, telepathy, stopping time...cool, yes, but also very common in these types of stories.
- Forgettable. This has as much to do with the side characters as with the abilities themselves. Most of the secondary Lagniappe characters didn't have enough screentime for me to remember their names or what their abilities were. Which is a shame, because I bet some of them were super interesting and I honestly just don't remember them.
- This is a problem I've found in quite a few of my recent reads: the key emotional moments just weren't there. I'm a big fan of emotional payoff, and I don't care how long it takes to build up to that (actually, the longer the better, usually). But with Iridescent...I didn't really get much of either? Okay, granted, there weren't THAT many moments with really high stakes or emotional potential, mainly because this is the first book and a lot of it was spent world-building, which is fine. But there were a few moments like those, such as , and I think they could've delivered a much bigger punch if developed more.
- The villains. Disclaimer: I'm VERY hard to satisfy when it comes to villains. Especially when we're dealing with superhero-esque villains. None of the villains in Iridescent were terrible, and was actually pretty interesting, but were too 'classic villain' for my taste.
Overall, I did enjoy the story, and a few of the characters really had me intrigued *cough cough Leo and Becca cough*, but the aforementioned problems I had kept me from going over 3 stars. Kudos and respect to Kait Spangler for all the work and love she poured into this! KEEP DOING THE THING!
July 24, 2017
A fun, quick read. Looking forward to the next story to see where the characters will go and how they will develop! A good first novel by Kait Spangler and I look forward to seeing how she'll grow as a writer!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews