Review The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Source: Giveaway
Look for this at Amazon / BN / BD
To know more about the author: Website

Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, Mackie comes from a world of tunnels and black, murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattoed princess. He is a replacement - left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago when it was stolen away by the fey. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood and consecrated ground, Mackie is slowly dying in the human world. Mackie would give anything just to be normal, to live quietly amongst humans, practice his bass guitar and spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem, where he must face down the dark creatures and find his rightful place - in our world, or theirs.

The Replacement was pleasantly surprising. This book was on my bookshelf for a while until I decided to read it for the Wicked Valentine Read-A-Thon. This book was one of those wildcards I choose when I want to explore new authors. I wasn’t sure about it but it paid off because this title is now on my favorites.

The story begins slowly and little by little actions go in crescendo and it becomes active and intense. I appreciate this author’s efforts in building an atmosphere in The Replacements. Gentry as the setting becomes this dark place where you can’t help but ask how people can even think of progeny in that town. As the pages pass, Gentry becomes scary, which I loved of course. If this book becomes a movie once upon the future, I can only imagine Tim Burton working on this.

The writing style in this book is amazing. Great level of detail and descriptions without being boring. Descriptions are done so that the setting can take concrete form on the reader’s mind. My time reading this book became more interesting and I simply was absorbed by the pages. It was easy to feel an ever present empathy with the characters, especially towards the MC. I wanted to see Mackie redeem his antiheroe nature and become triumphantly heroic.

The originality level of this goes thru the roof. The theme is mysterious, the idea is well formed and well structured. It can easily generate more stories in the same fictional world or even a series could be born. That said, even though this world can be used for plenty of stories, I don’t see Mackie in more books in the future. I think his story has been said but I would love to see the story of the two sisters and how House of Mayhem and House of Misery come to be.

I recommend this book for readers who enjoy Paranormal YA.