Fury (edition 2011)

I was super excited to read Fury, even though I knew absolutely nothing about it. Why? The drool-worthy cover. Well, this isn't the first time a pretty cover has led me astray. At first, I thought the cover was a total liar. It suggests fantasy and there was nothing too overt for a long time. I saw it coming, but it wasn't very interesting to me.The fantasy elements really felt rather secondary.

The first couple hundred pages of this book are like reading Gossip Girl or some other series about spoiled rich kids being spoiled and rich and obnoxious. Ugh. I hated Em from the beginning, with her stabbing her best friend in the back and her constantly getting her nerdy friend who's in love with her to drive her to parties. Why don't you help your friend JD be popular rather than mostly only hanging out with him in private? Chase is worse with his constant focus on popularity and getting into girls' pants. Worst of all by far is Zack, the cheating man ho that needs to just gtfo.

The book did get a little bit better, but I never really cared. The plot and characters remained sub par. There just were not any people that I cared about at all. A lot of it was predictable, but there were a couple of twists that did manage to catch me by surprise. The story alternates between chapters from Em's point of view and chapters from Chase's. The ending of Fury suggests that a sequel is inevitable, but I do not much care. I wish she'd wrapped it up in one, because I definitely was not interested enough to want to read another book, even though there's mythology in it.

The best part of the book was the cover, at least for me. However, if you love stories about spoiled teens and their drama, along with some vengeance tales to boot, you'll probably love Fury. ( )

This is the second time I've read this book, and I pretty much love it. The only thing I didn't like about the book was Em. She did something wrong, and she knew it, but she kept trying to make excuses for it anyway. By the end I was kind of over her and her part of the story. ( )

This is the second time I've read this book, and I pretty much love it. The only thing I didn't like about the book was Em. She did something wrong, and she knew it, but she kept trying to make excuses for it anyway. By the end I was kind of over her and her part of the story. ( )

This is the second time I've read this book, and I pretty much love it. The only thing I didn't like about the book was Em. She did something wrong, and she knew it, but she kept trying to make excuses for it anyway. By the end I was kind of over her and her part of the story. ( )

This was one of those books that grabbed my attention right away and kept me turning the pages but left me frustrated and disappointed by the end. The main character Em is not particularly likeable. While I can understand being attracted to her best friend's boyfriend, her complete lack of empathy about how it would hurt her friend felt odd. This was a girl that she considered a sister and did everything with, but somehow Em feels that she'll see how good Em and Zack are together and would be okay with that. She really lacked the ability to put herself in anyone else's shoes or even have much depth of understanding of how her action might affect others in her life. That coupled with all the examples of Em and her friends bullying and belittling others to the point of suicide in one case, made her and her friends very unlikeable. They also seemed to drink way too often for underage teens. Parties are one thing, but going into the parents good booze when you and your friend are just babysitting and watching tv together? Seemed a little excessive and unnecessary imo. Especially with all the drinking and then driving, especially in bad weather. Not to mention driving and texting!

The Furies seemed odd, focusing on punishment of kids for things that didn't necessarily seem all that bad or different than any other mistake an immature teen might make. Yes, Chase humiliates a girl who later kills herself, but she had previously humiliated him in a pretty nasty way when he reached out to her in friendship and the girl's best friend was clear that Chase wasn't the cause of the suicide and that the girl had a lot of other problems like severe depression. The way Chase is punished by the Furies seemed, to me, way too harsh and out of line with the person Chase is shown to be. Yes he did a really nasty thing but he also does some kind and helpful things. Chase has some insecurities and makes some mistakes, which he does later regret, but considering the difficulties and abuse he's already endured in his life it seemed like he wasn't that bad of a kid. I didn't like where his storyline went. It seemed cruel (especially for his Mom) and it made little sense to me. Ditto for JD. It just seemed like a lot of people who didn't deserve it were being hurt over some fairly minor teenage mistakes.

Considering the horrible things people are doing in the world everyday it just seemed kind of ridiculous that the Furies would care about the kind of "sins" being committed by these kids. Plus I kept waiting for more explanation about why Chase and Em were targets when Zach was a total jerk and had done things much worse in a lot of ways or why the Furies had come at all, but nothing about them was really explained. There were hints of things and maybe more will be revealed in book 2, but it a little frustrating for the reader not to understand them better. They were odd and somewhat creepy.

The writing was good and kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next and I think that's why I felt so disappointed at the end because I really liked the book from the start. I expected it to wrap up in a way that offered more to explain why the Furies targeted Em and Chase ....some explanation that made it all make sense to me but instead I was left feeling uncomfortable with the way the story lines played out. It just felt wrong and unfair and there was no sense of satisfaction at all for the reader. I was left not liking the Furies at all and not liking the book overall because of the end. It just left me feeling like of depressed. I don't want to say too much because of spoilers and it's hard to describe how you feel when you like a book almost all the way through and expect it to be something you recommend to others only to find it leaving a bad taste in your mouth at the end. I'm not sure I'd pick up the next book in the series. ( )