Review: The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong

Book one in the Darkest Powers Trilogy

About The Summoning

After years of frequent moves following her mother’s death, Chloe Saunders’s life is finally settling down. She is attending art school, pursuing her dreams of becoming a director, making friends, meeting boys. Her biggest concern is that she’s not developing as fast as her friends are. But when puberty does hit, it brings more than hormone surges. Chloe starts seeing ghosts–everywhere, demanding her attention. After she suffers a breakdown, her devoted aunt Lauren gets her into a highly recommended group home.

At first, Lyle House seems a pretty okay place, except for Chloe’s small problem of fearing she might be facing a lifetime of mental illness. But as she gradually gets to know the other kids at the home–charming Simon and his ominous, unsmiling brother Derek, obnoxious Tori, and Rae, who has a “thing” for fire–Chloe begins to realize that there is something that binds them all together, and it isn’t your usual “problem kid” behaviour. And together they discover that Lyle House is not your usual group home either…

Source: Goodreads

Review

I'd considered starting this series for awhile but I just didn't get around to it before now.
I finally read book one The Summoning and I'm really happy that I did. It's a good book.

As it often is with a first book in a series there's a lot of background information and I felt that the first 2/3 of the book moved very slow, but the last 1/3 was great, really tense and with a lot of suspense.

In the beginning of the book I felt like the langueid was a little to young for me and I was afraid that I couldn’t get into the story when the main character Chloe Saunder acted in a way I had a hard time following but it approved through the book and the characters grow on me over time and I ended up liking the story and the characters.

I feel like this book left a lot of unanswered questions, I know that's what series do but I don't feel like I got enough from this book.

The book ends with a big cliff hanger and I'm very interested to know what happens in the next book.

I give The Summoning 3 out of 5.

Next in the series:
2# The Awakening
3# The Reckoning