Blog Tour: Hidden by M. Lathan (Review)

Hidden (#1) by: M. Lathan (2012)

240 pages

Genre: YA Paranormal

Source: I received a free copy from Xpresso Book Tours and the author!

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | Amazon | Smashwords

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Leah Grant has given up on being normal. She’d settle for stopping the voices in her head, intrusive visions of the future, and better odds of making it to her seventeenth birthday.

That’s the thing about pretending to be human in a world where magic used to exist – at any moment, her cover could be blown and she’ll be burned to death like the rest of the witches.

Everything changes when she loses control of her powers and flees the orphanage she grew up in. She desperately wants to be invisible but finds her face plastered on every news channel as humans panic over the possible resurgence of her kind. And now the hunters won’t give up until they find her.

Making friends for the first time in her life and falling in love with one of them drives her to discover why she is unlike any being she’s ever met – human or otherwise. The dangerous powers inside of her that would repel Nathan, her new, handsome reason for living, are priceless to some. The locked up forever kind of priceless. And to others, they are too dangerous to allow her to live.

Let’s hope she can stay hidden.

My Review

Hidden is a very interesting paranormal young adult novel that has a shaky start but picks up and has some unique qualities, making it a nice refresher from the norm. It's a fun enjoyable read with some great OMG moments.

(Although I sound a little harsh about the beginning of this book, I want you to know that it gets better and I really did enjoy reading it.) Now I’m going to be completely honest, this book was kind of a drag at first and a little confusing. I wasn’t a fan of the main character Leah, she had such low self-esteem it drove me crazy, it was due to her raising and having no knowledge of who she really was, but it was hard for me to read about her at first. Also, she is bullied relentlessly by mean girls at the orphanage and no one does anything about it, this drove me crazy since you would think the Sisters at the orphanage would have done something, anything. I was worried because I wasn’t enjoying the first 30ish pages, but then something happened that completely changed my mind.

There is a turning point in the book, when she leaves the orphanage, and this is when the book gets really really good and I start to really like Leah. We get to meet more supernatural people and Leah finally starts to get some answers about who she is. I love her friends and find all the secondary characters interesting, complex, and the friends that Leah really need.

Hidden features a world where witches aren’t a secret but were deemed evil and gotten rid of, giving Hidden a unique edge in the paranormal genre. There is way more than meets the eye in this novel. There are some good action scenes, fun moments with friends, and shocking secret reveals, basically a whole lot of stuff is going on in this first novel in this series, keeping me very entertained. The ending left me wanting more and I can’t wait to get a hold of the next book, which comes out later this month. I want to see how everything plays out.

This is a good investment for fans of young adult paranormal books that love action and romance, not to mention some pretty memorable characters.

** Thank you Xpresso Book Tours and M. Lathan for a free copy of this book! This in no way affected my honest review.

RATING 3.5/5

Author

M. Lathan lives in San Antonio with her husband and mini-schnauzer. She enjoys writing and has a B.S. in Psych and a Masters in Counseling. Her passion is a blend of her two interests – creating new worlds and stocking them with crazy people. She enjoys reading anything with interesting characters and writing in front of a window while asking rhetorical questions … like her idol Carrie Bradshaw.

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