Book Review ~ Icons by Margaret Stohl

Title: Icons
Author: Margaret Stohl
Series: Icons #1
Release Date: May 7, 2013
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopia/Fantasy/YA

Your heart beats only with their permission.

Everything changed on The Day. The day the windows shattered. The day the power stopped. The day Dol’s family dropped dead. The day Earth lost a war it didn’t know it was fighting.

Since then, Dol has lived a simple life in the countryside — safe from the shadow of the Icon and its terrifying power. Hiding from the one truth she can’t avoid.

She’s different. She survived. Why?

When Dol and her best friend, Ro, are captured and taken to the Embassy, off the coast of the sprawling metropolis once known as the City of Angels, they find only more questions. While Ro and fellow hostage Tima rage against their captors, Dol finds herself drawn to Lucas, the Ambassador’s privileged son. But the four teens are more alike than they might think, and the timing of their meeting isn’t a coincidence. It’s a conspiracy.

Within the Icon’s reach, Dol, Ro, Tima, and Lucas discover that their uncontrollable emotions — which they’ve always thought to be their greatest weaknesses — may actually be their greatest strengths.

Bestselling author Margaret Stohl delivers the first book in a heart-pounding series set in a haunting new world where four teens must piece together the mysteries of their pasts — in order to save the future.

Review:

I purchased the e-book format of Icons initially because I was super impressed with Margaret Stohl’s work on the Beautiful Creatures series.  I downloaded Icons on release day and was waiting for the right time to dig into it.  I finally found the time and sadly I was NOT impressed.

Dol is our heroine and I just could not make myself sort of like, much less care about her.  I didn’t find Dol to be a strong leading character.  Her best friend Ro was a much stronger character than Dol was.  I found that I did like Ro in the beginning of the book, but as the story wore on I found myself liking him less and less to the point that I could not keep reading.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the main plot of the book was actually supposed to be either.  In the portion of the book that I did read I found that what plot there was was pretty weak.  I get that with the first book in a new series you have a TON of world building to do but I felt that 100+ pages seemed a little extreme to me. The synopsis itself is pretty catchy.  That is what drew me to the book.

What I did like about Icons was that the book was about Aliens!  This is a first for me.  I’ve never read a book that dealt with Aliens being the “supernatural” being before.  I also give the author major props for branching off and doing a solo project.  I didn’t care for Icons but that doesn’t mean that it won’t appeal to you.

Rating: DNF