Side note: What is with me reading a Meg Cabot book after
reading intense books? So weird…
As with all of Meg Cabot’s books, I’ve read this series
before, but it’s been a few years since I have. Right, so… When Lightning
Strikes is the first book in a series about a girl named Jessica Mastrani who
on her way home from school one day gets struck by lightning. She doesn’t think
too much of it, until the next morning when she knows the location of two
missing kids.
Yes, that’s right. A girl gets struck by lightning and after
seeing pictures of people – such as the missing kids on the back of a milk
carton – and some sleep she knows where those people are. Now, she doesn’t
freak out about this…too much. Jess instead does the right thing, and calls the
1-800-WHERE-R-YOU hotline and reports the locations of these kids. Obviously,
because she keeps doing this, people start to get interested on how exactly she knows this and the FBI gets
involved.
Now, I’ve probably already said this about Meg Cabot’s
writing, but she creates her characters so well that those characters that
you’re supposed to hate you really do come to hate them and want to slap the
crap out of them – yikes…I’m a real violent person apparently.
…Right, anyway, there were only two complaints with this
book. One, the character of Rob Wilkes – aka Jess’s love interest – as much as
I love him and ‘awed’ at the kisses and stuff…I’m just annoyed that he can’t
date her because he’s on probation and she’s sixteen while he’s eighteen. What
is with Cabot writing male characters that the female character can’t have? I
mean, The Mediator Series – Suze can’t have Jesse because he’s a ghost, The Princess
Diaries – Mia can’t have Michael because first he’s Lily’s brother and then
because he becomes this big engineer, etc. After a while, it kind of gets
annoying, but damn if it doesn’t make for one hell of an interesting plot. Now,
the second one isn’t just an issue with this book, but with a lot of the Young
Adult fiction genre. The parents in this book were so freaking annoying, and
this isn’t just a problem with this book as I’ve said. I’m not sure if it’s
because it’s young adult fiction, which mostly deals with teenagers, and teens
for some reason always have problems with their parents… But, yikes, I can’t
tell you how often I’ve come across parents in a book that I was just like –
seriously? Just…no…
Final rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Great story, great
characters, and amazing set up for future books.
Bookshelf worthy? As I’ve said before with Meg Cabot, yes.
Love her writing and since this isn’t my first time reading this series,
definitely.
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