She Said, She Said : Crux by Julie Reece

Inspired by the Pages of Bookish Love meme created by Ashley at The Bookish Brunette and Alexa at Pages of Forbidden Love, She Said/She Said is a new feature hosted by Barbara at Basia’s Bookshelf and Nick at Nick’s Book Blog, where we’ll choose books and review them on each other’s blogs.

Hi guys ! I'm super excited to be doing this feature with Barbara. She's an awesome blogger and friend and I love her to bits although I only know her virtually. We usually have very similar tastes so this should be very interesting! The book we’ve chosen for our first “She Said, She Said” is Crux by Julie Reece. Enjoy Barbara's fabulous review !

Summary (from Goodreads)

Title : Crux
Author : Julie Reece
Publisher : J Taylor Publishing
Publication Date : July 9th 2012
Goodreads - The Book Depository

She should have run. Now, she’ll have to fight.

Eighteen year old Birdie may be homeless, but she’s surviving, that is until a mysterious guy throws money in the air like a crazy game show host, and she grabs some with the idea she’ll be able to buy dinner that night.

In that singular moment, unassuming Birdie becomes the girl in everyone’s viewfinder. Thugs want to kill her. Money-guy wants to recruit her. The very hot, very rich, and very out of her league Grey Mathews wants to save her.

Birdie, though, wants nothing to do with any of them, until she realizes fate didn’t bring them all together.

Her heritage did.

Now, with only twenty-one days left, she’s got to decide whether to follow in the footsteps of those before her or risk her life for people she’s only just met.

Barbara's Thoughts

I don’t know what it is about me and choosing books purely on a whim lately. Normally my great-find to headache-inducers has been running around 3 to 7, a total opposite to what it was a few months ago. Crux fell someplace toward the lower end of the spectrum despite what could have been a decent story.

A man stumbles along a sidewalk clutching a suitcase, mumbling about greed ruining his life and money is cursed, so the logical conclusion is that he’s about to throw it out of it like a deranged game show host, right? That’s what homeless teen Birdie and six other people assume as they follow him down the street and it turns out they’re right. In the scuffle for the money, the man who Birdie recognizes as a teacher from her high school also gives her a velvet bag, telling her it was his curse but it could be salvation which pretty much confirms he’s a little crazy.

Three ominous-looking thugs who had scooped up part of the money look like they want to keep it all for themselves and since Birdie looks the most vulnerable, they go after her. She’s rescued by a guy named Gray and his family, but once he gets her to safety, she puts him out of her mind. Birdie doesn’t do connections.

I was mostly with the story up to this point. It seemed like it was heading into an interesting thriller and there was plenty of room to get to know Birdie. Then Jeff the Money Tosser, met up with Birdie again to explain what was really up with the story and I started wincing. This is really a story about a medieval Norse curse, placed upon the descendants of a family when a son betrayed his father. There are giant sections of info-dump explaining the curse, the mechanics of who is selected to try and break it and other things. Frankly, much of it makes no logical sense and as much as I enjoy paranormal stories, there are only so many times I can sit through a story where the characters are told to do things that end up meaning nothing at all.

Gray meets up with Birdie again, for romantic purposes and because he’s you know, fated to. I wanted to like him a lot because he’s exactly the kind of love interest that works for me. He’s the rich kid who is anything but a snob, steadfast in his support for Birdie despite all of her shoving him away and he happens to be sweet, funny and sexy. But he’s just too perfect. I wanted him to yell at Birdie once or twice and maybe slam a door in her face for being an idiot.

Birdie had a lot of potential and I was irritated that so much of it was dropped. Reece spent time hinting at a troubled past – she was homeless after all – and chickened out and handed me some sunshine and roses. I enjoyed the time she spent learning to use the paranormal gifts she had to defeat the curse because I looked forward to her kicking butt and taking names but I’m not sure what some of those awesome things she learned were for. There were so many starts and stops with her character that I didn’t feel like I ended up knowing much about her at all except she had a serious martyr complex because of a single incident when she first became homeless.

The supporting characters were interesting mostly because they were so expected. Chirpy, super-supportive sister? Check. Semi-lecherous hunk of a friend that sister secretly loves? Check. Hideous girlfriend-wannabe who tells main character, “I’m going to get you my pretty…and your little dog too!” Check. Wacky landlord who walks around in his bathrobe, muttering odd things? Check. They almost added some comic relief, especially the sister, although I have to give it to Reece, she was kind of cute.

My Summary: I know I was pretty hard on Crux, and poor Nick has to have me doing a little rant for my first appearance here! Honestly, I had the whole story figured out by the mid-point in the book and was just holding on after that. The action picked up, and I liked the characters a little better for a while, but the ending was just as nonsensical as some of what came before. I wish this had been less ambitious.

Barbara's Rating : C

If you're interested in reading my own review for Crux, you

should head over to Basia's Bookshelf today ! :)