Thursday, January 26, 2017

Review: Freeks

Author: Amanda Hocking
Started reading: January 10th 2017
Finished the book: January 26nd 2017
Pages: 400
Short review: Paranormal gifts, traveling carnival, insta-love, mystery, no great plot twists
Published: January 3rd 2017
Source: Netgalley - Kindle Edition

Got a copy of this book via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The main-character is Mara. A girl that lives with her mother. They travel with a carnival through-out the country. Mara has no special gifts, like the other members of the carnival. She just helps out with little tasks all over the place. She often has boyfriends in the places they visit, after that, she just moves on with her life. This book has a lot of side characters. You get to know a lot of the members from the carnival and also get to know some people of this little town they visit.
I really feel like the charcters all lack description. I would love to see more depth in the personality and in their appearance.

The story takes place in Caudry, a little town the traveling carnival vistis. The story mainly takes place around the carnival, and the trailer-camp.
It isn't clear to me what the balance is between "normal" people and the people with the special powers. In this story, the people with the special powers work at a carnival, but how about the people around the world with special powers who have normal jobs. And do the "normal" people know that there are people with special powers?

The traveling carnival is staying in Caudry and at night, strange things happen. People from the carnival get attacked and the members don't really know what is happening. The authorities in Caudry don't do much either, even when the members of the carnival ask for help. The carnival can't leave Caudry, because they have to stay a full week to get payed and the carnival is broke. Mara gets to know Gabe, a boy from Caudry and falls in love with him. While they have secrets for each other, the carnival also tries to survive through the night.
The story just goes on, and on, and on. The "climax" of the story is in the last 20 pages. That is when everything is explained (very quickly) and those pages aren't even that exciting.

It's all just too clear that something is up with Caudry and the people living there. From the first page you get to know Gabe, the author is way too clear about the fact something is going on with him. The book isn't too exciting and while people keep getting attacked, I never really felt that anyone was in grave danger. I really hoped for a shocking ending, but that wasn't the case either.

This book has a lot of promise, but it's just written too "easy". The insta-love is too easy, people getting attacked without answers is too easy. The police in Caudry isn't doing anything and when you expect a great climax it really just all collapses. The ending isn't exciting and I wasn't scared. I could see it coming from miles away. I think a traveling carnival with people who actually have "gifts" is kinda unique, so that's why I gave 2 stars.

Goodreads Review:
Review Freeks


  1. Thank you for not raving about this book! I'm with you completely, and nothing kills my interest in a book faster than things being too easy. Russell T. Davies once said that it was really hard to write for Dr. Who because in order to write the Doctor, you had to be smarter than the Doctor, and *nobody* is smarter than the Doctor. To me the writer's job is to be smarter than me, to make things complicated and then find resolutions that I can't see coming. I feel like a lot of authors these days are "dumbing down," you know?

  2. Of course, we could just be unusually brilliant. ;)