Review: The Summoning

Ｔｉｔｌｅ： The Summoning

Ａｕｔｈｏｒ： Kelley Armstrong

Ｓｅｒｉｅｓ： Book 1

Ｒａｔｉｎｇ： ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Chloe Saunders used to have a relatively normal life.

But now she finds herself in the middle of some really strange situations because:
~She suddenly starts seeing dead people.
~She gets locked up in a group home for unstable teens.
~The group home isn’t what it seems.

My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.

All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don’t even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost—and the ghost saw me.

Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won’t leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a “special home” for troubled teens. Yet the home isn’t what it seems. Don’t tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It’s up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House… before its skeletons come back to haunt me.

“That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Power without price.”

I’ve read a few series from Kelley Armstrong now and I’m a huge fan of her writing so I’m happy to finally get a chance to read some of her older stuff. I buddy read this with a friend and had fun reading it.

The story begins with Chloe Saunders, a teen girl who is haunted by ghosts only she can see. When she has an incident at school, she suddenly finds herself at a group home for troubled teens that has its own secrets to uncover. She makes a few friends and enemies during her stay that keep things interesting as Chloe begins to explore the powers she’s spent her life ignoring.

The story did start off with some typical teenage drama at the beginning, which made it feel a little slow but it gave us a chance to get to know all the residents at home. Things move a little faster after Chloe accepts her abilities though we still have a lot of questions at the end of the book.

I did like the story, but I think sometimes I took issue with how quickly Chloe accepted things. There wasn’t a whole lot of resistance when it came to her believing in the existence of magic and spirits. Though I think part of that is that it’s a pretty short book. I would’ve liked to see Chloe take a little longer to accept things because it would’ve seemed more believable (especially when she seemed pretty convinced about her initial diagnosis that she was schizophrenic).

I also would have loved for the ending to be a bit longer. Being on the run could have been really fun, but I’m hoping we’ll see more of that in the second book. Hopefully, we get some other POVs so we can follow the other characters as well.

Overall, this was a good start considering how old the series is. It was nice seeing Armstrong’s older work. She’s come a long way!