Review: The Gathering

Title: The Gathering

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Release Date: April 5^th, 2011

Series: Darkness Rising #1

Number of Pages: 359

Publisher: Double Day Canada

Source: Bought

Maya lives in a small medical-research town on Vancouver Island. How small? You can’t find it on the map. It has less than two-hundred people, and her school has only sixty-eight students—for every grade from kindergarten to twelve.

Now, strange things are happening in this claustrophobic town, and Maya's determined to get to the bottom of them. First, the captain of the swim team drowns mysteriously in the middle of a calm lake. A year later, mountain lions start appearing around Maya's home, and they won’t go away. Her best friend, Daniel, starts getting negative vibes from certain people and things. It doesn't help that the new bad boy in town, Rafe, has a dangerous secret—and he's interested in one special part of Maya's anatomy: Her paw-print birthmark.

I’m completely in love with everything Kelley Armstrong writes. She has this way to portray some amazing supernatural characters without making them come across as stereotypical. She never stops to amaze me.

Yet, the one thing that really got on my nerve with this book is the ending. I fell like this book was teasing me so much, building something that will come only in the next book. That’s a mean thing to do! I just can’t stop thinking about the story, the characters and about what will happen next. One of the things I love is that every book she writes seems to have a connection. The all are in the same world. I love this world, so I won’t complain!

I liked Maya, but I got to love her more and more through the books. You get to know her, the good and the bad. She’s not perfect, and she doesn’t believe she is. Daniel is amazingly awesome I must say, but I don’t really like the “maybe he likes her” feeling. I wish I could just say that they were more like brother and sister, like Maya seems to think at some point, yet Daniel really seem to like her more than that. I don’t want him to, because I completely adore Rafe. There’s something mysterious about him. I love how far he is willing to go to protect his sister. There’s just something deeper in him than just the bad boy image, which makes him more than just the usually bad boy character that all girls fall for.

Honestly, if you love Kelley Armstrong’s books as much as I do, you won’t be disappointed with it!