When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.
Except there’s something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she’ll turn to dust if he touches her. It’s not until Dez’s father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there’s more to this boy—and her father’s “law firm”—than she realized.
Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation—an organization devoted to collecting “special” kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons—his entire life. And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills. The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they’re caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe. A secret Kale will kill to protect.
My Review:
Dez helps a boy escape from men who are chasing him, taking him home to annoy her dad. Except her dad arrives with a gun ready to shoot Kale and doesn't seem to care if he hurts Dez. Kale's touch kills and he has been used by her dad's company as an assassin and when he can't kill Dez it means she must have special abilities too.
Dez and her friends seem to want to drink and take drugs and cause trouble, something that I detest in my main characters in YA books. I can't relate to characters I dislike and the opening pages are full of them. Kale is a cold character due to his background but I never really warmed to him and it bugged me that Dez doesn't seem bothered by Kale trying to murder her to get back at her dad. I didn't like Dez and her attitude much better though. Doing everything she can to upset her dad in a stupid pointscoring thing makes her pretty immature and again, I hate that in a heroine. And talking to a guy in weird slang when he has never been in the outside world seemed pretty dumb yet most of the time he wasn't asking what the hell she was talking about.
The writing seemed a bit odd in places as well. Especially in this scene. She gets her cousin Brandt to come and meet them to give them help and he arrives with the 'What's going on?' attitude, acting like he knows nothing. As soon as she starts to tell him, he cuts her off saying he was in her house to collect stuff for her and overheard her evil dad talking about killing people and capturing Dez and Kale. And of course he then decides to snoop on her dad's computer, despite the danger, to find targets that her dad wants to kill and a nice convenient address to go to, bringing clothes to cover Kale so he doesn't kill innocent people. Then when Dez mentions her dad killing people, Brandt goes pale and says 'kills people?' as if this is the first he has heard of it-but he was the one to tell Dez what he overheard! This didn't make any sense to me. That and the fact that in two minutes at her house, Brandt hears all the secrets and finds the address of a target, Misha. So why hasn't Dez's dad already attacked Misha? Why doesn't Dez tell Misha her hiding place has been uncovered? Yet Misha tells her they can't shelter her there as it is too dangerous for Misha's people. Hmmm. Confusing.
It was the same with the next few chapters. Go to one person to try to make contact with the resistance leader, don't have to prove who you are, given next name to track down for info and the last one you are sent to just happens to be the ex lover of Dez. It just all seemed so 'Convenient' and unrealistic that I found myself rolling my eyes. And in the middle of danger yet again, we have the inevitable love triangle nonsense with two posturing males who hate each other on sight and Dez getting hormonal. I feel like every YA book I pick up has the same thing dressed up with different names and places. So we get a big boring bit about how this guy broke her heart etc. This whole section was pretty samey and too much time was spent on silly things that added nothing to the story and slowed everything down. I lost all interest in the book at this point.
For me there was nothing really knew in this YA book. Rebel bad behaving girl, love interest is weird, ex lover issues, men are trying to capture or kill me but I must daydream about kissing him again and so on. Nothing wrong with the actual writing and it's not a crap book, just the same as dozens of others that I've read.
