Gemini Rising Review

Gemini RisingAuthor: Eleanor Wood

Publication Date: June 7th, 2013
Source : Received a digital copy via Harlequin (UK) Limited, Carina , and Netgalley. (In exchange for an honest review. Thank you!)

 

 

How far would you go to fit in? Sorana Salem is ok with being not quite bottom of the pile at her exclusive private school. Until the mysterious Johansson twins arrive unexpectedly mid-term. Hypnotically beautiful and immensely cool, magnetic Elyse and mute Melanie aren’t like the school’s usual identikit mean girls. Soon Sorana’s sharing sleepovers and Saturday nights out with the twins. But their new world of Ouidja boards and older boys might not be as simple as it seems. And the dark secrets that they share could be about to take Sorana down a path that’s impossible to turn back from…

  

 Review:

-Warning- If you’re not highly strung and are susceptible to manipulation, welcome to this review.

Read this book.

There, I said it.

Though for the majority of it you might want to pull your hair out, it’s a slow burner, you’ll have a lot of questions that don’t necessarily get answered, and  I have to say at first I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it. It took me a while to get into it and by the time I did it was almost over. Though what an ending! I can honestly say, one I wasn’t really expecting either. There are some good twists, thoroughly twisted scenes, but it’s mysterious and raw, and Sorona was realistic and like so many others before her that do get sucked into the wrong crowd. I liked Sorona, though I may have wanted to shake her a few times to wake the heck up and smell the crazy, and to just be herself. I get she was easy to manipulate but seriously, she wasn’t all innocent as she tried to come across. She was a little mean to begin with and that just escalated when meeting Elyse, but it was there, and for someone to point out about the bitch “A” crowd, she was a bitch too. Okay, among a different scale, and at least she admitted she felt mean, she came across a little fake at times, especially with Nathalie, who is supposed to be her friend, and don’t even get me started on Shimmi.

Though I get it, it’s hard when you don’t have many friends or in the ‘it’ crowd, but please, being in my own school college that was sharing classes with another school, I knew nobody. That was fun. Admittedly, I dropped out after a month, but my small class was friendly, not everybody’s mean.

Anyway, enough about me.


Sorona Salem isn’t popular, but she’s not at the bottom either, and pretty much nothing exciting ever goes on in her collective class in their exclusive private school, which she’s on scholarship. That is, until Elyse and Melanie Johansson arrive mid-term, and if that wasn’t enough, they’re identical twins.

Blonde and pretty Elyse, who’s confident and loud in a blasé way, falls in easily with the “A” crowd at first, and then there’s illusive Melanie, who’s quiet and pretty much the opposite of her twin.

Or should I say, that’s what we’re led to believe, and all too quickly you start to sense the influence Elyse likes to rub off on people. It didn’t work with Amie, and bumping into Sorona and Shimmi in line at their favourite local band’s gig, Elyse moves onto the quieter crowd and to Sorona.

This, right there, is the before and after.

The 5 become a group, but it’s no secret that Elyse dislikes Nathalie, mainly because she sees there’s something not quite right, and then mysterious accidents happen within the “A” crowd, and things get darker. You have your main character that’s sucked up in something she doesn’t even know is going on, even though deep down she realises the things Elyse manipulates them into is wrong, but she does it anyway, going along with the crowd. After one particular night has Nathalie out of Elyse’s’ hair for good, there’s nothing standing in her way, and she uses it. She also uses her friends, in Shimmi’s case, and even her sister.

 And of course, there’s a romantic interest, or, should we say two, per usual. Though I’m glad it wasn’t the main focus of this story, and was more of a side-line that didn’t really needed to be there, but it didn’t affect the story either way.

You can gather what’s going on between Elyse and Melanie, and when Sorona see’s something she really shouldn’t and gets involved and risks her own life, Elyse shrugs it off as nothing, but it finally breaks off that little piece in Sonora’s head that paints Elyse a saint. She starts to see and it unsettles her, and paves the way for the final act.

Something sinister resides in those twins, but a manipulator is a manipulator and you don’t have to be afraid of something you can see.

It’s the one you can’t you have to be afraid of.

And to be honest, if Melanie hadn’t done what she did, I would have.

Rating: 4, mainly because though it was kind of slow and leaves you with more questions than answers, I couldn't put it down.