The Ylem

The Ylem by Tatiana Vila

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First of all, thanks to Tatiana Vila for allowing the R2R group to review her book! 



Overall Impressions

I really, really enjoyed this book, far more than I even expected to!  It's a good thing I still have some credit on my gift cards so I can buy the next book!  The fact that it is a YA should not scare off any prospective readers.  I did not find the characters to be overly whiny or acting too young (a problem I have found in other YA books.)





Basic Premise

Kalista (great name, by the way!) is not your average teenager.  Her mother passed away years earlier in a car crash, so Kalista has "issues" with cars and driving.  She also bring new meaning to "electric personality" with the amount of static electricity her body seems to produce.  She also, along with her father, just moved from New York to Ruidso, New Mexico... 



She has already found a few good friends, and an "interested" male admirer, but due to a bad reaction from her former best friend in New York after Kalista declaring her feelings for him, she has pushed away the possibility of relationships with guys.  She finally meets the school heart-throb male, and finds she is not immune to his attractiveness.  But her resolve to keep guys at arm's length is tested when the guy seems to want to talk to her, and another is urging her to go out... Tristan is very alluring- but in a different world than Kalista, more than she even knows....



Life becomes even more complicated when teenagers are missing, then bodies prove that they were killed.  And a chance encounter leads her to an odd, old book that details a new aspect of the world that Kalista never knew.  She begins to learn the secrets of that world, but will she allow herself to learn the secrets of herself as well?



Thoughts- warning, could contain spoilers

I can't say how much I enjoyed it.  Sadly, my computer was down when I had finished it or I might have bought and started the second book right then and there!  Sorry, realized days later that book 2 is not out yet!  Can't wait! I didn't find many problems that I usually find in a YA novel.  I would recommend this to anyone that would enjoy "shifter" books and does not mind YA.  It was entertaining, had action, and romance.  All around a great book!  As with any book, there were a few points that left me wanting...

♦The change in point of view with Kalista and Caleb was disconcerting at first.  I had no clue who that guy was, and why I was reading about him.  Also- several of his parts were very ADD it seemed... his thought processes just bounced all over and it was difficult to keep up with his part of the story.

♦OK... So Kalista finds out about new things in her same old world, gets proof that they are real... then just ignores the other part of her reading/warning... maybe it's because I'm older- but if some old lady tells me I have "the Ylem" in me, and I find out there are shifters and stuff for real- I would at least ask those shifters when given a chance if they had heard of "the Ylem".  It's like she just ignores her "strangeness" and accepts the shifter thing much easier than I expected.

♦I really wish there was more build up of the romantic feelings between Tristan and Kalista.  It was better than some books showing a "reason" for them to be attracted and having some genuine interaction without just falling all over each other.  But even more build-up would have been nice.



I fudged in favor of the book on the stars- (shows 5 stars on review)- but I am really, really picky about 5 stars- so I actually gave it 4½♥'s.



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