Book Review: Unspoken

Sarah Rees Brennan's Unspoken! I enjoyed this book very much. Our heroine, girl reporter/detective Kami Glass, lives in the quaint but secretly spooky English village Sorry-in-the-Vale - and I think Brennan did a good job capturing that village feel, the sense that everyone knows each other and that many of the families have known each other for generations, without belaboring it.

(This is especially impressive because Brennan's writing is often about as subtle as a hammer. It's getting less so: neither Unspoken nor Team Human harp on their Themes with the same repetitive tenacity that the Demon's Lexicon books often did.)

Anyway! Curious Kami has realized that there are dark secrets bubbling beneath her apparently idyllic town: secrets that seem about to bubble to the surface now that the Lynburns have returned to their ancestral home.

And Kami has a secret of her own: ever since she was a tiny child, she's been having conversations with a voice in her head, a boy named Jared.

But then she meets Jared in the flesh...

I don't want to give too much away, because I think one of the greatest charms of Brennan's books is her talent for surprising twists. But I will say that one thing Kami and Jared do not do is fall into each other's arms. Jared thinks their mental connection means they're soulmates, but this reflects his own emotional problems: his parents are neglectful when they're not downright abusive, and he's so emotionally cut off from the world that Kami is his only really stable relationship. Even though until recently he thought she didn't really exist.

Kami, who has had a far less traumatic childhood, is doubtful. After all, she points out, they can barely stand to touch each other: it seems to open up the mental connection between them so they both experience an emotional overload.

Their relationship is by far the most interesting one in the book. The secondary characters are a little sketchy. I liked Kami's best friend Angela a lot, with her devotion to napping and general disdain for everyone, and I hope Holly gets more screen time in the next book, because I have high hopes for her. (But I think giving Kami a side love interest was almost a mistake, honestly, because he's just so much less interesting than Jared).

But there is a sense that everyone talks the same way: this very snappy one-liner dialogue, which is entertaining - but at the same time, they all talk that way.

Nonetheless, Kami and Jared's relationship is interesting enough to make such concerns mere quibbles. They're very different in some ways - Kami is sensible and methodical, Jared emotional and impetuous - but they're united in an attraction to danger.

And I think Jared is a good take on the bad boy type. He's dangerous, but he's not dangerous to Kami, which she is uniquely equipped to know because of their telepathic connection.

( Anyone want to talk about the ending with me? )