Alicia K. Leppert

Note: I received this book from Netgalley.

Speechless. That's how I feel after finishing this brilliant work of prose. I'd gladly give it six stars out of the five I'm allowed to give because it stirred my soul on such a deep level, I can't even begin to describe it.

At first, I thought it'd turn out to be something like A city of angels, but it wasn't. The story was unique in its own way. And it was so well developed, that it had me clinging to every single word, like it was the air I needed to breathe. Honestly, I haven't read such an emotional book in a very long time. I'm sure Emerald City will stay with me for a while, just like I'm sure that I'll be re-reading it sometime soon.

I must say that I was intrigued from the very first page. It was written in such a masterful way, with a style that completely answered my plea for a book that would be worth my time. I am glad for spending every second buried in the pages of Emerald City, because it made me realize many things I hadn't actually thought about. Things like the fact that no matter how bad things look, we should never give up on life. Or that feeling mentally and emotionally low is much much worse than being physically low. But most of all, I realized on a much deeper level that it's love that makes us weak, and love that makes us strong. And ultimately, it's the only thing worth fighting for.

I loved the way every detail was described, and it's a first time where the narrative didn't bug me out of my mind. No, here the narrative was my silent companion that made me feel one with both Olivia and Jude, the two main characters. The descriptions of their states of mind, the importance of their decisions and the thoughts that lurked in their subconscious drew me in like a drug, making me crave for more.

Most of all though, nothing about the story or the characters sounded casual, or cliched, or even a little bit unrealistic. In truth, they all felt so real, that at times I felt like I was pulled into their world and held there with sailing ropes.

The characters:
*Olivia - she started out as a complete mess. She was nobody, she felt like a nobody and somehow she preferred it that way. Until someone noticed her and called her a name that bothered her to the bottom of her soul. That name seemed to be the drop that pushed her into a whirlpool of events she could hardly control. But with all that she went through, she was still incredibly brave in the most human, most feminine way. It felt like she might need superpowers to get back among the living, but all she had were her own strength... and the help of a friend. I honestly loved Olivia, because she was true to herself, and she was real and tangible. She wasn't s shallow character that acted out of need. No, she was a person, living and breathing and hurting. To me, she was real.

*Jude - oh, how my heart ached for him! I knew who he was a couple of chapters before Olivia figured it out herself. And I had a feeling what decisions he would end up making. But boy, was it hard to accept! I think I literally felt pain when I read those last few chapters, because Jude was an amazing person. Everything about his experiences felt so real, that I could feel it along with him. The pain, the struggle, the ultimate decision... and how he grew from there. It was simply amazing. And when he called Olivia 'Liv', it was like my heart melted along with hers. It was beyond beautiful.

*Hal - what would this story be without him? He was the special guy that seemed to hold lots of answers. He was secretive and mysterious and open to help however he could. He made me smile, especially because of his job (you wouldn't believe!), and he totally won me over with his friendly demeanor.

So, in the end all I can say is: Read this book, people!!!! It's worth your time and money!!!!
… (lisätietoja)

My Review: I am not sure what it was about the synopsis of Emerald City that caught my attention. Yes, I am a sucker for romance and "mysterious" heroes, so maybe it was that aspect of the summary that made me click the "request" button on netgalley. I definitely don't regret it, even though this debut novel by Alicia K. Leppert turned out to be quite different then what I expected it to be.

As the synopsis states, the story opens with a harrowing scene of attempted suicide. Olivia is a 20 year old shell of a young woman, broken down by losing everyone that has meant something to her. Abandoned by even her best friend, Olivia has attempted to eke out her own life by working and owning her own apartment. But she lives like a robot, going through the motions without truly seeing or feeling, barely eating or full-filling other social or physical needs. After a particularly bad day at work, swallowing a bottle of anxiety pills becomes her answer to her problems. One minute Olivia feels nothing and is greeted by white light, the next she is waking up in the hospital, told she has been saved by her mysterious neighbor named Jude. And so Olivia's journey begins, her fight back to mental and physical wellness, finding something worth living for... Sounds like a pretty straight forward, contemporary novel, right?

I battled back and forth on how much I should reveal about Emerald City in my review. But after some careful thinking and seeing that other reviewers have talked about what I wanted to reveal, I decided to go for it. If you haven't figured it out already, Emerald City is actually a paranormal romance and our mysterious hero, Jude, is an...angel! Now hold that thought.

Here is what I liked about the novel. I think the author did a great job with capturing the realistic nature of depression and suicide. I completely disagree with another reviewer in regards to how long it takes to heal after suffering a great loss. In the book, Olivia's mother killed herself a year before. Another reviewer felt that her depression lasting a year over the death of her mother felt unrealistic. They felt that after a couple of months, Olivia should have been able to start healing from her loss. Seriously?? Who puts a limit on the grieving process? Everyone deals with loss differently, so I thought the author dealt with the subject conscientiously.

Emerald City is filled with great characterization. The author really takes her time to build the relationships between her characters. While some other reviewers felt it may have taken too long for the relationship between Olivia and Jude to begin to really blossom, I thought it was a nice change from some of the typical "instant love" romances out there. I also like the fact that the author didn't bog the story down with tons of secondary characters. Not that I have issues with secondary characters, but Alicia K. Leppert does a great job making the characters she has three dimensional. One of my favorites is Hal, the mysterious homeless man that Jude always goes to when he needs to borrow materialistic things, like a truck, money, etc. I know, sounds weird, right? How can a homeless man have those kinds of connections? Read to find out :)
Even though the paranormal element wasn't really evident until about halfway through the book, I liked the angel mythology that was introduced. In Alicia K. Leppert's world, her angels don't have any wings. Heaven is not located in the sky, but is hidden in some sort of alternate dimension. Spirits are kept separate from angels. There are also many different kinds of angels, like ones that comfort you before you pass on, those that guard you, etc.

Now to my issues with Emerald City. A few are minor and are just thoughts/questions I had while reading. Olivia owns her own apartment in Seattle, but only works at a cafe shop. Is that realistic? Olivia swallows a whole bottle of pills but somehow Jude convinces the hospital it was an "accident". Really?? Apparently he did not use any of his "heavenly" influences to convince the hospital staff that it was an accident. It doesn't sound plausible.

When Olivia is at one of her therapy sessions, she thinks to herself that she doesn't want to reveal that Jude is the one that saved her. She tells Dr. Robinson that she has been spending time with a guy and that he is her neighbor. Then later in the conversation, she mentions that her savior the night she tried killing herself was her neighbor. Wait, didn't she just give it away??? I think it was one of those unconscious errors the author made and the editor didn't catch it. A little proof reading and rewording would have solved that mistake.

Also, without giving away too much, there is a part where Olivia is able to "meet" Jude's mother on the other side. I thought this was a bit odd since I would have thought that if the author was going to go in that direction with the story, it would be Olivia's mother that she would be able to see. Considering the fact that she has regrets about her mother's death and wishing she had the chance to talk with her one last time, I'm not sure what purpose was gained by making it be Jude's mother whom she meets. Again, maybe it slipped the author's mind, but I thought adding Jude's mom to the mix was a bit of an odd angle.

Lastly-- and this is my biggest issues and sadly, I don't think this is the author's fault-- I think Emerald City was completely marketed wrong. Back to my earlier comment, I first went into this novel thinking it was going to be a contemporary YA novel. Then I started reading it, and with Olivia's age being revealed at 20 and the serious/grimness of the depression and suicide attempt, I thought wow, maybe this is more of an adult novel. Then the angel concept was intertwined and I came to the conclusion that this is a YA paranormal romance for older teens. On top of the genre confusion, throw in a completely ambiguous cover art and book title, and you have yourself a hot mess of confusion. Now, I have talked to enough authors to know cover art is usually completely out of their hands. But I am still stuck on the title. Sometimes authors have a say, sometimes they don't. Other then Jude's green eyes which are mentioned quite a bit throughout the novel, I can't figure out what "Emerald City" means. And it absolutely does not help market the book at all.

Emerald City was not a bad read. I think the author captures the realistic and ugly stages of grief, depression, and suicide. I liked that the paranormal elements were introduced a bit later in the book. It was a nice change to see the relationship between two characters take its time to develop rather then using the instant love formula that we see so much in YA novels. Great characterization, interesting angel mythology held the story together. But a few plot holes such as poor editing, combined with the terrible marketing of this book is why it only gets a 3 out of 5 star rating. I think paranormal romance fans will miss out on Emerald City because they won't know about it. Thank God I am open minded! Someone who picks up this novel thinking its a contemporary romance may leave a worse review simply because they felt misled.

Mia at The Muses Circle… (lisätietoja)

This book fell flat for me. Olivia is just whiny. Nothing in her life was bad enough for her to react the way she did about everything. All she did for the majority of the book was, as my mom would put it, "throw pity parties." And as the saying goes, "nobody likes a negative Nancy." Okay. Enough with the colloquialisms, down to the review.

I didn't like Olivia. And not liking the main character makes it hard to enjoy a book. She whines and tries to kill herself and everything because daddy didn't love her and her mom killed herself. Okay, so I'll concede that finding your mom dead from suicide would traumatize a person, but seriously, that's the only thing bad that happened to her. She didn't suffer from abuse. I mean yea she was like a 500 year old virgin, and that's depressing, but past that, and one friend giving up on her because she was so freaking emo, NOTHING BAD HAPPENED. I'm pretty sure most people in the world have had worse lives than she had, yet she made a big stink about it and whined constantly. Jude should have let her off herself. Seriously. It would have saved me a lot of time if she had died on page 5 or whatever. Moving on from that rant...

Jude was an okay character. He was so cryptic that I wanted to smack him, though. I mean he has his reasons, and toward the end, you figure them out, but until then, it's just a bit frustrating. I feel that Leppert drags the whole thing out too long. It made it hard for me to stay focused on the book. Between Jude's cryptic answers and Olivia's whining, I had a very difficult time with this book.

The pacing of this book is slow-as-molasses, and it's not very exciting until the end. When something finally does happen, the book basically ends. The subplot and action don't have time to even develop before they're over. This makes for a pretty boring read, if you ask me.

The romance is more G rated than the romance you find in most YA books. That within itself is kind of depressing. I felt no passion from either of them, really. Just really sappy, probably can't be real because it's so flowery, love. Gross.

The writing itself was well-done. Leppert has a good voice, and I hope that in the future she creates more likable characters. I'd be willing to read another book from her, but I wouldn't be willing to read another book about Olivia and Jude. I enjoyed Leppert's writing style, I just didn't enjoy the story itself. I'm not saying that everyone will react this way to the novel, and I'd recommend checking it out from the library or reading a chapter or so to try it out. A lot of people like this book. I'm just not one of them.… (lisätietoja)