BLOG TOUR: ARC REVIEW Visited by Janine Caldwell

Title/Series: Visited
Author: Janine Caldwell
Publisher: Janine Caldwell
Published: May 25th 2013
Format: eBook | Pages: 185
Genre: YA, Paranormal, Fantasy
Source: ARC provided for blog tour
★★★✩ (3.5/5) Stars!

Seventeen-year-old Joanna Murphy has lost faith in her life. Vying for her mom’s attention, she’s resentful of her stepdad’s intrusion to their family. Her best friend, Tommy, has no clue she’s in love with him as he dates girl after girl without noticing how it tortures her. The final kicker, though, is God’s sick joke to make her freakishly tall when everyone knows boys prefer petite girls.

Then in a bizarre accident Joanna meets James, a breathtaking teen who appears to her after an unusual falling star sighting. Suddenly, her dream for an alien encounter becomes all too real. But when she finds her life has been made unrecognizable, she’s forced into an explosive study of the original design for her life that just may have her regretting every wish she ever made.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

You hear it all the time, be careful what you wish for, and this book was a huge lesson in that. Sometimes you think you know exactly what you want with your life and what you think will make you happy. But getting everything you want doesn't always mean things are going to be better, be perfect. Sometimes getting what you think you want, only makes things worse.

Joanna is your typical teenage girl, if a bit nerdy. She loves to read and she's into sci-fi and aliens. She's about to start her senior year of high school and she should be excited but, everything in her life completely sucks. Her mother has remarried and is blissfully happy, but it had been just the two of them for so long that now she's feeling like she's losing her mom and her attention. She can't stand her step-dad and she doesn't try very hard to hide the fact. Like most girls her age she has body image issues as well. She's extremely tall for a girl. Freakishly tall in her opinion. Guys don't seem to like tall girls. Especially her best friend Tommy, who tends to date petite girls. Tommy who she's been in love with as long as she can remember, and he doesn't seem to notice. And to top it off she gets a phone call from her volleyball coach with some terrible news about her status on the team. Everything was going wrong.

That night she sneaks out onto the roof of her two story house for some star gazing, it's her happy place. She spots what appeared to be a shooting star and is so caught up in it she winds up having an accident. Suddenly a gorgeous golden haired boy, James, shows up and comes to her aid. After waking up in the hospital the strangest things start happening. Her life is completely different, like everything she wished for suddenly came true.

I was very back and forth for the first half of the book about my feelings for Joanna. In so many ways she was extremely immature and very selfish and I just wanted to smack her! But she grew so much throughout this book. She went from resentful, angry, sullen and out right mean at times to patient, caring, understanding and thoughtful. Walking around for a couple weeks in her perfect and ideal version of her life really opened her eyes to everything her selfish heart wouldn't allow herself to see. She got to see that for everything she gained that she was so sure she wanted, that she would lose something from her life that she wanted even more. Her growth was so heartwarming to watch unfold.

This book was so full of surprises and a lot of fun to read. Not everything was what it seemed. I thought I knew what was happening and I ended up being pretty wrong. I got thrown for a surprise there towards the end. Overall I enjoyed this book, though I will admit the somewhat abrupt ending and events right up to the end had me slightly disappointed but we shouldn't always get what we wish for right?

About the author:

Janine Caldwell was born in Concord, CA and raised in the small San Francisco Bay Area town of Clayton. Four days after her high school graduation, Janine attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and graduated with a degree in English. 

Janine now lives in Anthem, AZ with her husband and two sons. As a lifelong literature fanatic, she knew it was only a matter of time before she would become obsessed with writing her own work. With relatives like the Brothers Grimm and Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), she figured fantasy writing had to be in her DNA.

Books published by Janine include Visited, a YA coming-of-age fantasy, Rematch and Double Fault—the first two books of The Vortex Series. The final book in this YA fantasy romance, Deuce, will be released fall 2013.

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