Book: to nowhere, C.E Wilson

Series: N/A

Publisher: ebook

Release Date: July 5^th, 2015

Rating: 3 stars

*I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. And an honest review I shall give.*

I am quite open to paranormal books. I’ll read anything – vampires, aliens, faeries, you name it. So when I was approached by the author of To Nowhere, a story involving giants, I was like sign me up! Add another paranormal creature to my list.

And I will admit; Wilson has created a unique world in this book. I’ve never read a story about giants before, but Wilson completely expands the idea and makes it completely her own.

 Inside a portal is a world completely different to our own. Giants, with pointed ears and a different language reside and live there peacefully. Their world is quite similar to ours: they have civilization, language, technology, jobs, movies, parks, etc. They’re trying to find a living just like we are.

Lyris is our main character. Seventeen years old, she’s just moved to a new neighbourhood with her parents. While exploring the town one day, she meets a boy in a coffee shop. And like any hormone-driven teenager, she’s immediately intrigued and begins fantasising about dates and kissing and calling him her boyfriend. Insta-love, you know. But Wyatt turned out to be extremely cryptic and had an agenda up his sleeve. First he wanted to look at a haunted house with Lyris, but then changed his mind. But Lyris, like a child almost, decides to do the opposite of what Wyatt says. She checks out the haunted house by herself, despite Wyatt asking her not to.

Suddenly Lyris finds herself in a strange new world, one filled with giants. She learns that humans are sold off as pets there, and features like hair colour, age, gender, are all factors in the kind of giants that purchase you and for how much.

I didn’t like Lyris at all, and hated her narration. She was spoilt, vain and mean. She was used to getting what she wanted as her parents were rich, so when she can’t go home right away, she practically throws a tantrum. I was constantly rolling my eyes at some of the things she said. While she realises just how good she had it in her own world by the book’s end and starts to be a little more selfless, it didn’t make her character any more likable.

Brindt, the giant who captures Lyris, is sweet. All he really wanted was a friend in the end. And Lyris, despite her bad attitude, teaches Brindt about the lives of humans and how they’re more than just pets to be kept in cages. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him.

Wyatt is your typical asshat of a douche. He acts like he cared about Lyris, but I think he really only wanted his money in the end. He was willing to sell anybody, child or adult, as long as he got paid in the end. I think he got what was coming to him in the end.

While the world building was really good and interesting, and the concept behind keeping humans as pets was definitely something unique and something I’d love to see explored, I have to dock stars for Lyris’s character and the way the book was written. The writing was a little chunky and repetitive. The characters were constantly repeating themselves and saying things that were already obvious. “Show, not tell”, is an important quality when writing books. Let the reader guess instead of pointing out every little thing. The book also lagged a little in the middle and I had to skip over some sections.

Read it if you’re into uniquely designed worlds that raise some interesting ethical questions and is new and different.