Review: Struck by Jennifer Bosworth

Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
Published: May 8, 2012  
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Pages: 384
My Rating:  2 of 5 stars

Synopsis: Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

My Review: So Struck. Well at least I can say that I'm pretty sure I've never read anything about a lightning addict so its original. If only I had enjoyed it more. Honestly this book just wasn't for me. There were many things about this book that just left me annoyed or bored.

Going into this book I expected a story about a girl getting constantly struck by lightning. I wanted to read about her getting struck. I think that's the only reason I kept reading. I wanted to know what happened when she got struck. Instead I felt like I was being bombarded with religion. Now I don't have anything against religion in books but I felt like it was constantly being thrown at me. I don't like that.

So basically this entire book is centered around two cults. The Seekers and the Followers. The Followers are the people who well follow the Prophet. The Seekers are against the Prophet. I didn't really have a problem with the Seekers it was the Prophet that gave me a headache. It was just pages of him saying why he was right and why the world had to end and that God was speaking through him. It got old very fast. For most of the book I didn't see either cults motivation. It wasn't until the end that I finally found out that the Followers wanted to world to be "cleansed" and that the Seekers didn't want it to be.

Mia was also a big problem for me. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't like this girl. I wanted to. I really did. I mean a girl that's a lightning addict? That's just so unique and original. Mia started out as an ok character but then Jeremy came along. Now the book starts off with him trying/wanting to kill her and then he's stalking her. So guess what Mia does. She falls in love with him because he's hot. I honestly have no idea why Mia fell in love with him. He wanted to stab her with a knife because he thought the world would be better without her. Sounds like a great boyfriend right? There's also the part where she's completely fine with him stalking her. No just no. That is not ok. I found Jeremy very creepy. Just because he's hot doesn't mean he can stalk people.

At the end I was practically asleep. At the most intense part of the book I was bored. It was probably because I felt nothing for the characters. I didn't care when the Prophet was threatening her mother. I just didn't. There was also the little detail at the end about how far away the storm was. Mia said that she counted six seconds and then she said the storm was "six miles off. Maybe less" Maybe. There is no maybe about that. That storm is actually a little more than one mile off! Just take the number of seconds and divide it by five to get the miles. Every five seconds is about a mile. You can Google it!

Struck did have some redeeming qualities. It had a concept that was different from any other book I've read. I mean how many books about lightning addicts are there? I only know of one. Well I guess now I can say I've read a book about a lightning addict.