Review for Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

"Sixteen-year-old Evie has always taken comfort in the fact that she is normal, even though her best friend is a mermaid and her ex-boyfriend is a lunatic – and a faery. In a world where paranormals are monitored and controlled, Evie works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency because of her unique ability to see through glamours. But someone – or something – starts killing vampires, werewolves and other paranormals, and Evie must figure out what’s happening before they all disappear." Paranormalcy was everything I hoped it would be and more. It met all of my expectations and then some and completely surprised me. I picked up this book expecting a good paranormal romance and whilst Paranormalcy certainly delivers that it also has so much more to offer. Kiersten White entwines light and dark perfectly, some parts of the book were action packed and full of mystery and other parts were funny and light-hearted. Most young adult paranormal stories are about a normal, plain girl who gets thrown into this paranormal world. Kiersten White offers up something original with our main character Evie already being in the middle of crazy paranormal goings on and all she wants is to be a normal teenager. Paranormalcy is very much a breath of fresh air in the YA Paranormal market bringing to the table plenty of new themes and originality. Evie’s well aware of the popularity of Vampires and things that go bump in the night and the book kicks off to a fantastically funny start when a vampire is stunned by Evie’s nonchalance towards him when- like most girls would be- she isn’t sucked into his charm because under his glamour as this hot guy she can see the aged, dried out, corpse that he really is. Evie’s awareness of the modern world makes her feel incredibly real making her immediately relatable to the reader. Kiersten White does a fantastic job of mixing legends and magic with modern technology and weapons, like Evie’s uber awesome, pink, rhinestone studded, supernatural zapper Tasey, making Paranormalcy feel very updated and cool. What made Paranormalcy positively shine for me were the characters. I love Evie. I love her so much that she’s actually become my second favourite character EVER. Picture Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, now give her brains a sassy, snarky personality to boot, and some pink but very lethal weapons to kick some paranormal butt and you have Evie. She’s a bad ass, smart, total girly girl with a heart of gold (in some cases quite literally!) who has a love for all things pink and trashy TV. She’s so different to any other young adult heroines out there. I love her more than cake and want to live inside this book forever so we can be BFF’s. All of the characters are strong and exciting to read about. I loved Lend Evie’s love interest and Lish her best friend who’s a freakin’ mermaid guys! *squee* the characters were so well developed and I enjoyed my time with every single one of them. I loved everything about Paranormalcy, the mythology and detail behind each paranormal creature was so well thought out and fascinating to read about. Although this book deals with all kinds of paranormals it has quite a lot of faerie action. Now I’m not usually a fan of books about faeries but the ones in Paranormalcy actually scared the bejesus out of me and I found them really captivating, interesting creatures. You can tell Kiersten’s spent a lot of time building this world up and it totally pays off. Kiersten White is a very welcome addiction to the parnormal romance genre. Her writings funny, dark and sassy and I already can’t wait to get my next Evie fix. If you’re bored of paranormal books and are looking for something to rekindle your love of the genre this fresh new take on things is for you. Recommended to anyone looking for an original, fun, paranormal read. My Rating 5/5 stars ***** Synopsis taken from Amazon Thanks go to Harper Collins for sending me this book to review