Title: DoonAuthors: Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon
Series: Doon
Pages: 368 (hardcover)
Published: August 2013 by Zondervan
Summary: Veronica doesn't think she's going crazy. But why can't anyone else see the mysterious blond boy who keeps popping up wherever she goes? When her best friend, Mackenna, invites her to spend the summer in Scotland, Veronica jumps at the opportunity to leave her complicated life behind for a few months.
But the Scottish countryside holds other plans. Not only has the imaginary kilted boy followed her to Alloway, she and Mackenna uncover a strange set of rings and a very unnerving letter from Mackenna's great aunt—and when the girls test the instructions Aunt Gracie left behind, they find themselves transported to a land that defies explanation.
Doon seems like a real-life fairy tale, complete with one prince who has eyes for Mackenna and another who looks suspiciously like the boy from Veronica's daydreams. But Doon has a dark underbelly as well. The two girls could have everything they've longed for...or they could end up breaking an enchantment and find themselves trapped in a world that has become a nightmare.
My Thoughts: It took me forever to finish this book. I only had 25% left of the book to read but I think it took me over a week to finish that last bit. But I was bound and determined to finish this sucker! I felt like I had to finish this book before starting another one because I had already put so much time into it. Usually I'm okay with not finishing a book because if I'm not enjoying it, then why waste the time you know? But for some reason I felt like I had to know what happened in this story!
Now I love cheesy romances and contemporaries. With that said, one of my literary pet peeves are cheesy adventure or fantasy elements in a story. They end up feeling lazy to me and I no longer feel immersed in the story when these parts would come up. I found myself skimming the last quarter of the book because of this.
I did really like how friendship was one of the main themes in this book, though. And I really liked the dual perspectives, too, even though I enjoyed reading from Veronica's perspective a little more than Mackenna's slightly more whiny point of view. Veronica just felt a little more fleshed out and three dimensional than Mackenna so when Veronica got to have most of the story told from her POV, I must admit that I was a little relieved.
I also really liked the natives of Doon and the originality of the story, as well. It was a great and original idea but I feel like it in terms of what I was looking for in this novel and in terms of the kind of books I'm really enjoying at this point, that it could have been executed a little better.
However, like I said earlier, I felt compelled to finish this book and find out what happened with Mackenna, Veronica, and the people of Doon because it was such a rich and interesting world that they inhabited, but the plot wasn't completely there for me.
It had a great beginning and good epilogue, but almost everything else in between was a bit draggy and predictable. I recommend this book to anyone who loves a nice, cheesy, young adult novel with friendship and love as the center of the story and maybe to a younger reading audience, too.
I don't think I'll be continuing on with this series, but I think if I had read it when I was in high school that I would have really loved this book, but it's not exactly the kind of book that I'm really into reading at this point in my life.
My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
