The Shadow Girl by Jennifer Archer

The Shadow Girl by Jennifer Archer
Genre: YA Paranormal
Publisher: HarperTeen
Expected Publication: April 9th, 2013
Page Count: 336
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Sometimes I forget for an hour or two that she's with me. Sometimes I convince myself that she was only a dream. Or that I'm crazy.

For as long as Lily Winston can remember, she has never been alone. Iris, a shadowy figure who mimics Lily's movements and whispers in her ear, is with her always—but invisible to the rest of the world. Iris is Lily's secret.

But when Lily's father is killed in a tragic accident, his cryptic final words suggest that he and Lily's mother have been keeping secrets of their own. Suddenly, Iris begins pushing Lily more than ever, possessing her thoughts and urging her to put together the pieces of a strange puzzle her father left behind. As she searches for answers, Lily finds herself drawn to Ty Collier, a mysterious new boy in town. Together, Lily and Ty must untangle a web of deception to discover the truth about her family, Iris . . . and Lily's own identity.

For some strange reason, I was kind of let down by this book. However, I didn't hear much about the book beforehand, so I don't know how my hopes were let down.  The cover--gorgeous.  The idea--awesome.  There were so many different ways that this book could have gone, and it was so cool just to think about them all.  While what I got from the book wasn't terrible or that disappointing, I was still hoping for more.

Lily wasn't that much of a stand-out to me.  She was determined, yes, and stubborn, but not in that kind of way that makes me fall in love with other heroines.  There was a generic feel to her character.  Been there, done that.  Nothing I haven't seen before.  I was missing that spark from here.  I felt that she was a bit of a drama queen, with the way she wasn't getting what she wanted in this book.  She was constantly crying--understandably so, because her father just died--but she just cried a looooottt over everything, and so did her mom--who was even worse than she was!  It was just a bit infuriating to read about such . . . dramatically written characters.

And, oi, the characters got worse from there.  But then they also formed the love triangle, so I was already wary of them.  There's Ty and Wyatt.  Ty was explained in this bad boy kind of manner, but I wasn't feeling it.  I thought him to be a decent enough guy with long hair.  He didn't break my heart.  Then there was Wyatt, who I thought to be the cuter one.  He was Lily's best friend since forever, and I was kind of rooting for them, but then Wyatt showed his true colors--which were ugly.  His over-protectiveness was waaayyy over the top for me.  It was just too annoying for me to handle.

The only thing that had me going was the idea.  I wanted to find out what was up with Lily and this Iris chick.  And lemme tell ya--it was worth reading this one all the way through.  The mystery was pretty awesome and creepy and the plot was never predictable--besides the characters, that is.  I enjoyed it!  It wasn't what I expected, but that was okay!

The Shadow Girl was an alright read.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that amazing, either.  I've been sitting on this review for a while because I didn't know what to write about it!  My feelings for the book were just meh.  Indifference.  I'm sure others will enjoy it and others will hate, but I'm sure people who enjoy a good mystery will like this one.

3 Splashes