Shift , by Em Bailey

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published May 22nd 2012 by EgmontUSA (first published September 1st 2011)

ISBN

1606843583 (ISBN13: 9781606843581)

edition language

English

original title

Shift

 

Olive Corbett is not crazy. Not anymore.

She obediently takes her meds and stays under the radar at school. After "the incident," Olive just wants to avoid any more trouble, so she knows the smartest thing is to stay clear of the new girl who is rumored to have quite the creepy past.
But there’s no avoiding Miranda Vaile. As mousy Miranda edges her way into the popular group, right up to the side of queen bee Katie – and pushes the others right out – only Olive seems to notice that something strange is going on. Something almost . . . parasitic. Either Olive is losing her grip on reality, or Miranda Vaile is stealing Katie’s life.

But who would ever believe crazy Olive, the girl who has a habit of letting her imagination run away with her? And what if Olive is the next target?

A chilling psychological thriller that tears through themes of identity, loss, and toxic friendship, Shift will leave readers guessing until the final pages.

 

 

 My Review

I suppose Im not really sure what to make of this to be honest. It was book that has had me utterly confused on what I actually feel for it, and whether it was a book that was actually worth reading at all. I admit that when I first saw it I was attracted by the cover, wanting to know why this girl had a face made of ripped magazine parts. Automatically my first thought is that it must be another book about appearance and how we try to change the way that we look because we are not happy with the way that we look. In some ways this did reflect in the book though, just not with the intentions that my mind had thought it would. It was, in all honesty, perhaps the most oddest fantasy novel that I have ever read. It was like alien meets something entirely new altogether and becomes something a little bit freaky, that or its something from one of the very good and yet original buffy the vampire slayer series. The character olive was a well defined character and you instantly get this need to figure out who she is and what it is that she is clearly having complications for. I love the way that Ami is brought into the book as well adn you really get this sense of her being someone very real. But I suppose thats the good thing about the novel, it leaves you not actually knowing what to make of it, or what to expect from it. The characters though are well defined to a point where you can somehow elbaorate a connection with them to understand where they are coming from.

I think though my favorite part of this novel was the fact that I got to know all about olive and what it was that she had been through. In the end it was just a very normal situation that a lot of us kids have to go through and this for me automatically makes the book that much more attractive because there is something to relate to. The book challenges the very fact that sometimes we as kids are confused about the conflicts of divorce and that figure, that because we are the kids and they have left us, that it is our fault and no one has actually ever set us straight. I think the way that they represented what Olive went through was very well done, especially when it could have been something that was very much a taboo subject, that just doesn't get talked about. It represented the psychological effects that actually a family breakdown can have on a child and this in itself is thought provoking, especially if you have been through a similar thing. Ami, I think, is the inner person that we all have within us, the perfect version of who we want to be. We all hate the person that we are, even when we try to act all big and tough about it and claim that we would change nothing, but really we all have an Ami inside of us, and that of course again makes the book once more a relatable topic. Em bailey seems to have really connected with her main character and it made me wonder how much of the character was based around her personality or that of someone that she knew, because for me she just came across as someone very life like and real. Like someone that I could probably bump into if I were to walk down the street on a random day.

The story line though about the shifter, Im not actually sure what to make of it. I wasn't particularly interested in it and didnt find that concept of the novel interesting. It was almost as if it was the failing back up plan of the book in case the main storyline didn't carry, but to be quite frank, had you just put your normal preppy bitch queen in the novel instead of this shifter, then it would have probably worked a whole lot better. The alien meets shifter concept was just not working for me and did feel like it was a little like a last shove of hope of making the book a worthy rating one. By the end of the novel I was actually sat wondering what the book would have been like has miranda not existed at all. After all we had the queen bee bitch there already, the lover boy that just seemed to good to be true, and the psychological traumatised girl with a mum that seemed to be facing a hell of a lot more than what she would admit to. Therefore did we really need a life sucking alien in the story? I suppose in some ways, yes we did, otherwise it would have been another cliche love story but in other ways, could the idea not have been better planned and contrasted into the book? Because for me the alien just felt like the actual alien non fitting part of the book.

The book has therefore been one of mixed views and opinons and I suppose this is why I am finding it hard to rate. I want to give the Ami and olive section a five because for me there was just something very real and relatable to it there, but for the rest of it, I almost kind of want to give it a two or three. I think this is why I am sorta of going to head for the medium one and give the bok a four, because you can see that the author has really worked on this to make it a substantial and mind grasping book, but at the same time, she just hasnt got there.

 

My rating