READING:Haven by Kristi Cook

Haven by Kristi Cook

Publication Date: February 22nd 2011

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Hardcover, 416 pages

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One month into her junior year, sixteen-year-old Violet McKenna transfers to the Winterhaven School in New York’s Hudson Valley, inexplicably drawn to the boarding school with high hopes. Leaving Atlanta behind, she’s looking forward to a fresh start--a new school, and new classmates who will not know her deepest, darkest secret, the one she’s tried to hide all her life: strange, foreboding visions of the future.


But Winterhaven has secrets of its own, secrets that run far deeper than Violet’s. Everyone there--every student, every teacher--has psychic abilities, 'gifts and talents,' they like to call them. Once the initial shock of discovery wears off, Violet realizes that the school is a safe haven for people like her. Soon, Violet has a new circle of friends, a new life, and maybe even a boyfriend--Aidan Gray, perhaps the smartest, hottest guy at Winterhaven.


Only there’s more to Aidan than meets the eye--much, much more. And once she learns the horrible truth, there’s no turning back from her destiny. Their destiny. Together, Violet and Aidan must face a common enemy--if only they can do so without destroying each other first.

Haven was both a surprise and a disappointment for me.Disappointment because it was a book really far from original,that I kept rolling my eyes to the constant references to other popular books of the same genre and a surprise because despite that,I had a really good time reading it!

Once I started reading Haven I was immediatelly hooked both with the story and with the writing style.It's a fun book,with a plot that has pretty much everything in it.Vampires,super powers,a boarding school,a romance and a cute couple.That's pretty much the success recipe for a book if the writer manages to catch the reader's interest.Certainly you can change vampires with angels,or witches or anything, you name it,but the result will be the same.And I love this combination,don't get me wrong.After all,if I didn't like it I wouldn't pick contantly those books!

But though the combination might be the same pretty much in many books,each writer has something to differentiate his/her story from the rest.And in that department,Kristi Cook both failed and succeed!How can that be possible?

You see,at first,there are some similarities with,I'll just say it,Twilight.Girl leaves her home town and goes to a totally different place,her life altered forever.There's a school and there she meets mister perfect with whom she shares an immediate attraction and he seems to notice her all of the sudden while in the past,no girl managed to catch his interest.Enough similarities already?But okay,I didn't mind it cause let's face it,there are other books out there starting on the same ground and then the similarities end.But not in the case of Haven I'm afraid.Throughout the whole book,there are more and more incidents that seem almost alike or a bit different not only from Twilight but from Vampire Diaries also...And that really bothered me...

One might say that it's total unjustice to just dismiss a book because it just happens to share similarities with other books.But I don't dismiss it...Cause to be honest,despite not being original,Haven was really fun and I just couldn't put it down!It was written in a way that made me turn the pages constantly and although the cliches bothered me they didn't manage to spoil the fun of the book totally.Should Haven be the book I read before Twilight Saga or Vampire Diaries,believe me I would have been ecstatic about it!

And it's a pity for the book and the author that a book that was really good by all means, takes the reader by the hand and shows him so profusely its disadvantages.Cause to be honest,the author could have come up with something better and stay away from parts of books that are so famous instead of just using them almost unaltered.

So,if I had to rate Haven,not taking in mind those cliches believe me it would be a 5 star rating unconditionally,cause I liked the story,I liked the characters and it had some twists near the end that kept me reading constantly.But since those cliches are huge and I can't but take them into consideration I'll stick with a 3.5 rating.

If I will read the sequel should it come?Certainly!