Title: Abandon
Series: Abandon Trilogy
Author: Meg Cabot
Publisher: Point
Format: E-book
Release Date: April 26th, 2011
Pages: 185 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Young adult

I don’t often rate books under three stars — and even less frequently under two stars — but when I say that books like Abandon are an absolute disappointment to the young adult genre, I stand by my conviction. This book is nonsensical and, frankly, insulting to fans of YA for being so utterly pedantic. Meg Cabot is responsible for one of my favorite YA paranormal series, The Mediator, so I know she’s capable of so much more than what she’s presented in this book. This just ultimately felt like a cash grab to leverage the trend of paranormal YA romance.

Pierce Oliviera has come back from the dead. Literally. Since she was revived from legal death two years prior to the start of the novel, she’s struggled with keeping a firm grasp on the world of the living. Pierce’s tenuous grasp on mortality led her mother to uproot everything to move to Isla Huesos, Florida to start fresh following a series of scandals in her previous home in New England. Once there, she starts to feel even worse than before, like there’s something — or maybe someone — from her past keeping her from focusing on the present. Will she successfully convince everyone of her sanity, or is she doomed to repeat the folly of Persephone?

When looking for books to populate my newly-minted Google Books account, the Abandon trilogy appeared as a recommendation; given my love for Cabot’s work in the past, I immediately dropped the money for it. Post-Abandon, however, has me questioning my taste level. It has everything that I’ve come to hate as a reader: insta-love, ending on a cliffhanger, a nonsensical plot, vapid characters — the list goes on. And now, because I paid for all three books, I feel self-pressure to read the other two. Ugh.

I expect insta-love between characters to come from newer writers, especially ones just dipping their toes into creative writing through fan-fiction. Meg Cabot, who wrote the beautiful slow-burn between Suze and Jesse in Mediator, fucking knows better than to write a couple like John and Pierce. The main couple originally met back when 7-year-old Pierce attended her grandfather’s funeral; John was an immortal demi-god of the Underworld who seemed deeply interested in her at that time. Lovely age gap there. Once she briefly dies in her teenage years, they meet in the Underworld — and he instantly wants to protect her. Because of course he falls in love after .03 seconds of knowing each other. After Pierce comes back to life/escapes the Underworld, their entire will-they-or-won’t-they relationship is spent with her screaming at him whenever he appears among the living to save her from some doom she’s gotten herself into. Because, again, she’s just so perfect and worth it after knowing her for no time at all.

When it comes to a coherent timeline within the plot, there really is none. The book starts right when Pierce and her mother move to Isla Huesos, Florida immediately following some nebulous, mysterious event that happened at her old school. She goes to the graveyard on the island, argues with the King of the Underworld, and then embarks on a series of expository flashbacks for several chapters. After the flashbacks stop, we get a few more chapters of continuing the story around Pierce’s first couple of weeks at her new school, a few more expository flashbacks, and then the climax of the plot occurs somewhere along the 85-90% mark. There are threads of some sort of linear plot structure, but they’re so thin that they’ve easily snapped. Of course, as is standard with every book that’s set up to be the first of a trilogy, Abandon ends on a cliffhanger. Even though this book infuriates me, I now almost feel obligated to read the next installment so I can get some resolution to Pierce’s current situation.

What attracts me to Meg Cabot’s stories are her heroines: they’re usually full of personality and all easy to root for, with clear motivations that make them feel real, despite their often fantastical situations. You want Mia Thermopolis to kick ass being a punk princess. You want Suze Simon to be a great Mediator with Father Dom. I don’t feel the same sort of pull towards Pierce Oliviera. Her defining personality traits seem to be stomping around and yelling at any one in her path. She’s constantly reminding herself to “Check [herself] before [she wrecks herself],” based on a tattoo she saw on the wrist of a school guidance counselor, yet she never actually follows this mantra. All Pierce seems to do is wreck things and she often acts on her feelings without thinking of their repercussions. Several people die — including herself — over the course of the novel due to her rash decisions and yet she doesn’t tend to show the smallest shred of ownership over what she’s done. Again, I see no reason why John feels attracted to her.

On the other side of the coin, I don’t see why Pierce feels so utterly attracted to John, either. Given their history — his asking her dubious questions about mortality when she was seven, followed by kidnapping her to his private chambers in the Underworld (twice) once she hit puberty — signs point more toward Stockholm Syndrome than genuine romantic attraction. In the scenes they share, you don’t really get any sense of John’s personality, either, other than that he felt obliged to follow Pierce around everywhere and protect her from all of the messy, dangerous situations she’s walked into. Their relationship feels shoehorned in just to follow the pattern of Hades and Persephone instead of developing naturally (wow just like Mia and Michael and Suze and Jesse!).

Was I expecting this to be Meg Cabot’s best work? No, absolutely not, because nothing can beat Remembrance, the Adult installment of the Mediator series. However, given the quality of the rest of her work — even lesser known books like All American Girl and Avalon High — I was hoping that Abandon would at least be of the same caliber. Overall, with all of the glaring problems within its pages, it’s clear to me that this book is nothing more than just a quick way to ride a bandwagon and cash in.