Book Review: The Vanishing Girl (The Vanishing Girl, #1)

Author| Laura Thalassa 
Edition| Kindle eBook, ARC (courtesy of Netgalley in return for an honest review)
Genre| NA Fiction/Fantasy
Rating| 4.5 Stars

I received a copy of this book as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you Netgalley!  For those of you wondering, this book is being re-released and you can buy it in kindle format.  The hard-copy won't be available until February 27th (I believe), which is why it was available as an ARC.

This was a very surprisingly good novel.  In fact, it took one chapter to get me hooked, something that hasn't happened for a long time with this genre.  In the middle of reading it I even pre-ordered a copy of the next book, which I have to wait much too long for.  I had modest expectations for this book, but they were blown away.

Ember is a teleporter.  Ever since she hit puberty, whenever she falls asleep she travels, for ten minutes, to somewhere else in the world.  And then, after she turns eighteen, she gets directions in one of her travels- she needs to kill someone.  From there forward Ember is quickly swept into a government run facility that trains teleporters like her and her pair, Caden.

I'll be honest and say this book was just shy of five stars.  I loved the two main characters, Ember and Caden were fully fleshed out with motivations and pasts.  Their romance was a little on the insta-love side of things, but not unbearably so.  The side characters were almost three-dimensional, but there were so few of them and I wished we got to know them a little more.

The plot is always moving, though rarely fast-paced.  I liked the mythology of the series to, even if it sounds a little hokey.  Had it been bad writing I wouldn't have bought the story, but Thalassa is good at her craft.  So good, I'm considering reading some of her other books, though not right away.  My biggest problem lies in the world-building.  There could have been more.  I think I'm just more attuned to huge worlds right now since I've been reading a lot of epic fantasy, but there were some holes I wish were filled.

Going into this book I thought it was YA, but about halfway through it's obviously New Adult.  There are some steamy scenes (which I thought were very well written) that won't appeal to everyone, so be careful going into this one.

So, now I just have to wait for the next one.  Additional warning: there's one hell of an awesome cliffhanger at the end.