368 Pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Plenty of teenagers feel invisible. Fiona McClean actually is.
An invisible girl is a priceless weapon. Fiona’s own father has been forcing her to do his dirty work for years—everything from spying on people to stealing cars to breaking into bank vaults.
After sixteen years, Fiona’s had enough. She and her mother flee to a small town, and for the first time in her life, Fiona feels like a normal life is within reach. But Fiona’s father isn’t giving up that easily.
Of course, he should know better than anyone: never underestimate an invisible girl.
You know that kind of book that goes exactly how you expect it to but you still can't seem to dislike it? Well, that was Transparent for me. Even though it wasn't full of surprises, I still found the story sweet and a good pastime.
So, the first and probably one of the only surprises I experienced throughout this novel was that I didn't know that there were more people with special abilities. And I was pleased that they found a great excuse for the development of these abilities. After reading this synopsis, I kind of expected to read more about Fiona's life with her dad yet the story goes through this part of the story rather fast. Furthermore some things felt superfluous to me, like Graham's (her brother) storyline and Radiasure (the drug which caused this special abilities but it doesn't play a big role). Her father wasn't a very good villain, either. Nonetheless I fell in love with the world-building; I really enjoyed that many people had special abilities.
Fiona was a different main character; I liked and disliked her a lot. I do understand that it must be difficult to be invisible but she also shouldn't be so clueless this often. Nevertheless I really liked her snarky side though it was hard to take her serious sometimes. Bea and Brady were great secondary characters. However I think that I would have liked to read more about The Pack (Bea's brothers) because they were so much fun to read.
Transparent was a great novel to pass the time but I was actually expecting a little more from the storyline; maybe that was the problem because I had set my expectations so high. I thought we would see more from Fiona's past as a thief. However the romance was really sweet and the great set of secondary characters really added some spark to the story. I would recommend this book to the lower YA crowd.
Thanks to HarperTeen for providing me with a copy for review!
Oh, boy! I hate clueless characters. I don't know.. Maybe it's because I'm usually good at crosswords and sudoku that I tend to solve 'mysteries' in books quicker than the MCs. Still, it bugs me if they don't figure it out. At least the secondary characters were to your liking. I love family relationships in books and it's unfortunate that it didn't concentrate more on this in Transparrent. I like a sweet romance though.. Still, I'm not sure if it's for me. You're actualy the first person to give it more than 3 stars among the people who I've seen reviewing it. I'm glad you found it a somewhat enjoyable read though. I hope you have better luck with Ink :-) I found the ending of that one pretty good even though the plot was pretti darn predictable.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I see that you're from Switzerland (currently at least). Eeeek!! I've travelled a lot in Europe (since I am a European after all) and Switzerland is one of the most magical places I have ever been to. It's a place I must go back to and I can't wait to do it :-)