First We Were IV by Alexandra Sirrowy
Published: July 25th 2017 by Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Amazon: First We Were IV
It started for pranks, fun, and forever memories.
A secret society – for the four of us.
The rules: Never lie. Never tell. Love each other.
We made the pledge and danced under the blood moon on the meteorite in the orchard. In the spot we found the dead girl five years earlier. And discovered the ancient drawings way before that.
Nothing could break the four of us apart – I thought.
But then, others wanted in. Our seaside town had secrets. History.
We wanted revenge.
We broke the rules. We lied. We told. We loved each other too much, not enough, and in ways we weren’t supposed to.
Our invention ratcheted out of control.
What started as a secret society, ended as justice. Revenge. Death. Rebellion.
I added this book to my TBR a while back, before its release, because it looked like something that would be right up my alley. I loved the premise and this was a highly anticipated read for me. Unfortunately, this book fell flat in a lot of ways for me and I ended up DNfing.
I loved the beginning of this book! It started out at the end, with one of them dead – we don’t know which one and we don’t know why or how it happened, just that it did. This immediately created an air of mystery and I just wanted to know what happened and how they got to that point. We find out about the dead girl not long after that and it added even more mystery because we never find out what happened to her at the time of her death. I was looking forward to seeing what had happened to the girl and why she ended up where she did.
However, this book fell off into a tangent it didn’t need to go in. It felt extremely long winded after that and it didn’t focus on the main points of the story – namely the murder. The creating of the secret society and what they were there to do etc. took too long and it felt like not even the characters really knew what direction they wanted to take with it.
I feel that, because the plot itself went off on a bit of a tangent, I struggled to pick this book up and really get into it. I often found myself putting it back down and doing other things because I didn’t feel like the book was going anywhere all that fast. The pacing of the book itself needed to be speeded up a little and something interesting needed to happen plot wise for me, as a reader, to remain invested in the story.
I also didn’t feel a connection to or between the characters. Whilst they were supposed to be best friends (and outsiders), I didn’t get the feeling that they were as close as they thought they were and the friendship between them often felt forced rather than natural. I personally didn’t feel a connection the characters, either, so it didn’t really bother me when things happened to them. I wasn’t emotionally invested in the characters themselves and, at the point of DNF, I didn’t really care which one of them died.
Whilst this book had a promising beginning, it definitely went off on a tangent and lost its way a bit – which is a shame because this was a highly anticipated read of mine! I gave this book 1.5/5 stars.
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