Book Review: Switched, book 1 of Trllye trilogy

Book Review: Switched, book 1 of Trllye trilogy, by Amanda Hocking

Book Description from amazon.com:When Wendy Everly was six-years-old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. It isn't until eleven years later that Wendy discovers her mother might have been right.

With the help of Finn Holmes, Wendy finds herself in a world she never knew existed - a world both beautiful and frightening, and Wendy's not sure she wants to be a part of it.

Switched follows Wendy Everly, a teenage girl who had always felt awkward and out of place (her mother trying to kill her when she was six doesn't help her self-esteem much), into a journey to discover her true origin. First she was approached by Finn, a 'tracker' who insisted that Wendy was not human but a supernatural being --I won't reveal what kind of supernatural being she is, because her true identity is pretty much interchangeable with vampire/fairy/werewolf/alien, etc. You only need to remember that as supernatural creatures, everyone in Wendy's race is beautiful, rich and possessed one psychic power or another. You know, just the same-old, same-old YA supernatural creatures trapping.

Okay, maybe there're unattractive Trylles around, but they just totally escaped Wendy's notice anyway.

And then Wendy left her adoptive human family (called 'host family' in the book) behind to follow Finn into the hidden world of Trylle. *plot spoiler warning* From this point onward we are treated with Wendy's adjusting to her new home and into her new role as the Princess of her race.

It's only the beginning of the story, and I already found myself running into troubles with the characters, plot development and the setting of the story.

How many times had we ran into this 'ordinary girl turns out being a princess/queen/ruler of a supernatural race' settling before? It's overused, beat-to-death, tiresome, unoriginal and wish-fulfilling to the extreme. And the author, Miss Hocking lacks the skill to make that overused setup become refreshing or believable.

For her entire life, Wendy was a misfit who had a crazy mom who tried to kill her, then one day she followed that hot guy (who she knew barely a thing about) to an entirely unfamiliar Trylle's community and was told that she was in fact the daughter of the ruling Queen of said community. She just sucked it all up? What about her adoptive family? From start to end Wendy's brother and aunt had been nothing less than loving, caring and self-sacrificing to her, and after she left them behind, she didn't spend a second to miss or worry about them, while knowing said brother and aunt must be worrying themselves half to death for her? Not even a phone call to tell them she's safe? (she made one brief phone call before she escaped, but that's more or less just this) What kind of person is that!?

Then out of the blue, in around page 200 we're informed that Wendy had missed her adoptive family all along. What? I need to tell you the whole book is narrated in Wendy's first person POV, but I never see she did or feel anything to indicate that she missed her poor brother and aunt! She didn't spend a second to think about them, she never lost sleep thinking of them, she didn't try to contact them, plus said brother and aunt were barely in her thoughts as far as I can see. What a classical example for the 'Tell, not show' failure.

There's one little detail about Wendy being unable to zip up her dress so she asked Finn to do it for her. Goodness, why can't she ask a maid to do this, or ask Finn to find her a maid to do this!? When a girl asked a guy to zip up or zip down her dress in her private room, that can only mean: (a) she's seducing him, (b) she's too stupid to realize her request is very suggestive and the guy might get the wrong message, (c) she's too stupid to realize her request is inappropriate and might make the guy feel uncomfortable. On top of it all, Finn was supposed to be Wendy's mentor and bodyguard, not a goddam lady in waiting!

As to the reason why Wendy was sent to her adoptive family as a changling, it's even more questionable. The Everly family was chosen because they are rich and powerful, therefore Wendy's birth mother, Elora, figured that if she placed her daughter inside this family, it would ensure a large sum of inheritance slipping into the Trylle's possession eventually. So Elora just sent Wendy to the Everlys even knowing something might go wrong and Wendy might end up being harmed. And after Wendy learned all about it, she barely reacted to her mother's deception. Can this be serious?

Plus after all the craps Elora and almost everyone else had dumped on her, after seeing firsthand how unjust and suffocating the Trylle's lifestyle is, it takes Finn's departure to boost Wendy into deciding her life as a Trylle was miserable and she wanted to escape? That makes her look like a lovesick little fool instead of a heroine with a mind of her own.

*end of plot spoiler*

Okay, to be fair; it's stated that Wendy was uncomfortable and/or angry about a few things which were viewed as normal practices in the Trylle's society: (a) the treatment of the human changlings, (b) the practice of sending Trylle's babies to rich human families for the inheritance, (c) Elora's cold treatment to her subjects. But the problem is, so far I still haven't seen Wendy actually spoke up or acted up for herself or the people around her, she just ranted about the things she didn't like and that's it. It makes her look very spineless.

That's one more thing which bothered me: ever since Wendy's arrival to the Trylle's community, no one had ever been explaining to her what was going on or how she was supposed to behave. Not even Finn, who was supposed to care about Wendy and was appointed to Wendy as her tutor at the very first day, but the guy still failed miserably at teaching the poor girl anything of importance (e.g. the Trylle's politic, the social norms, the culture, how to protect herself, etc). But then whenever Wendy did or said something wrong, she was being snapped at not only by her mother, but also by Finn himself! God, I feel that Wendy was being treated worse than a three years old. But you know what? Whenever her mother or Finn hissed at her, Wendy just sucked it up and apologized like it was her fault that no one had taught her anything useful. That girl really had no backbone.

There're a lot of description about designer gowns and fancy balls but not enough of world-building to make the Trylle's supernatural world outstanding. The Trylles are supposed to be able to wield magics of different sorts but this field was rarely explored since the noble Trylles refused to use their magic and everyone delayed teaching Wendy how to control her magic. (and Wendy didn't seem to be the slightest interested in using her power, neither) That makes the Trylles look like a group of self-important blue-bloods more than anything else.

The pace of the story is also terrible, most of the book is taken up by the romance/tension between Wendy and Finn, and the long, detailed progress of Wendy's makeover as a princess, which makes me wonder whether I was reading The Princess Diaries instead of a story about 'a world both beautiful and frightening'. The events which took place in the book are disjoined. The supposed baddio, the Vittra, attempted to kidnap Wendy at the beginning of the story and then they were nowhere to be found till the ending part. To make things worse, nobody mentioned the threat from the Vittra or ever explained to Wendy what the Vittra really was! Goodness! A Princess who will soon to be Queen isn't supposed to learn about their enemy!? What the hell!? There's a bonus story "The Vittra Attacks" at the end of the book, which is meant to show us how things go on the Vittra's side, but this bonus story is very forgettable and not impressive in anyway.

Secondary characters such as Tove and Willa capture my attention much more than the leads: Wendy and Finn ever can, I like Tove well enough and wish that he'd establish himself as a young man who has a mind of his own and the strong will and strength to change things around him in the sequels. But no, please don't drag him down by making him one of Wendy's love interests. Tove deserves better than this.

As the story progresses, I also found it getting more and more difficult to suppress my disbelief, which resulting in me bursting out with "What. The. Fxxk! It can't be serious!", "Hell, no fxxking way!" and "Fxxk, I can't believe he/she really did/said that!" repeatedly. I hope it's enough to let you know how bad things had gone.

I just don't understand why Switched can be so much of a failure when the setup has so much to offer: we have a crazy mother trying to kill her daughter, insisting said daughter is a monster, we have a confused girl trying to come to term with her new role, we have conflicts between the heroine and her powerful but unloving birth mother. The story could have been great, but the author failed to deliver, that's it.

The Final Words: Don't buy this book or download it no matter how cheap it might be, it doesn't worth it even though the book cover is quite pretty. If you want to read books about the nobilities of supernatural creatures, the Vampire Academy series has so much more to offer.