Review | Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus

Title: Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus
Series: Shadow Hills #1
Genre: Young Adult - Paranormal
Publication: August 24, 2010 by Egmont USA
Format: ARC
Source: ARC Tour
Rating: ★★★

Synopsis: His love captivated her... his secrets might kill her.

Since her sister’s mysterious death, Persephone “Phe” Archer has been plagued by a series of disturbing dreams. Determined to find out what happened to her sister, Phe enrolls at Devenish Prep in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts—the subject of her sister’s final diary entry.

After stepping on campus, Phe immediately realizes that there’s something different about this place—an unexplained epidemic that decimated the town in the 1700s, an ancient and creepy cemetery, and gorgeous boy Zach—and somehow she’s connected to it all.

But the more questions she asks and the deeper she digs, the more entangled Phe becomes in the haunting past of Shadow Hills. Finding what links her to this town…might cost her her life.

Thoughts: I must admit, I didn't like this book. At first. It took me quite some time to really get into it and I almost gave up on it. But I keep reading all these wonderful reviews on it and even though I kept thinking that maybe this book was just not for me, I decided to give it another try and finish it.

My mind was changed almost immediately after I picked it up again. The characters, that at first seemed unrealistic and at times annoyed me for instance Phe, who constantly managed to get herself in dangerous situations for what seemed to be no reason and Zach was just not my type of guy, later turned out to be great characters that I was able to connect with. I really enjoyed the relationship they had and how it developed, they were really cute together. The other characters were also fun, enjoyable characters with great and different personalities and I really liked most of them because I could compare them to real people I knew.

The story became a little more fast-paced and I actually wanted to know what happened next and what the mystery of Shadow Hills was, which had not been the case at the beginning. I wanted to keep reading it. I really liked that this was something different. Like I've noticed many readers comment, it's sort of refreshing to read about something other than vampires, werewolves or faeries. Not that we don't love all of those, but this was something I thought was truly unique and that really kept my interest all the way to the end.

I really do recommend this book to everyone. This book is packed with a lot of mystery, a great story line and pretty unique characters.