Review: Rising by Holly Kelly

Posted July 15, 2014 by Stephanie in 2 Stars, Holly Kelly, Paranormal, Review, Rising, Romance, The Rising, Young Adult / 0 Comments

Title: Rising
Author: Holly Kelly

Series: The Rising #1
Publicatition: September 6th 2013 by Clean Teen Publishing
Genre: Young Adult ~ Paranormal
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Kobo
Cover Rating: 3/5
Overall Rating: 2/5



In a war between the humans and the inhabitants of the sea-humans will lose. Xanthus Dimitriou-the most lethal Dagonian to rise from the ocean-is on a mission to save mankind from annihilation. But first there’s one small thing he needs to do… kill a beautiful young woman in a wheelchair. Killing her doesn’t start out as part of his plan. He entrenches himself deep in the human world. Aligning himself with his enemies, he prepares to send them to Triton to face their punishment. Then Sara Taylor rolls onto the scene. Xanthus knows at once she’s a criminal. And her crime? Being born. She’s a human/Dagonian half-breed, an abomination. Killing her should be an easy job. All he has to do is break into her apartment, slit her throat, and feed her body to the sharks. Simple, right? Wrong. If only she weren’t so beautiful, so innocent, so sweet… Saving the world may have to wait. It appears Xanthus has a woman to save. But protecting her may cost him his own life.

I had a really hard time giving this book a rating. I kept going back and forth between one and two stars. I eventually settled on two because in general this book was pretty original due to the mythology elements. Gods like Zeus, Triton, Poseidon and Aphrodite got mentioned. I’m a pretty big mythology fan so that counted for something. And I did like the prologue + the first two chapters a lot, too. Also, it was a pretty quick book. I went through it fast, so that’s also something. But unfortunately that’s where the greatness ended because after the prologue and those first couple of chapters it went all downhill in my opinion.


As I said, the prologue and first two chapters had promise. A lot of promise, actually. I really liked the writing. It was pretty descriptive of the underwater world so I was excited to read more. It was when Sara came into the story it was starting to get kind of disappointing. The writing got worse and so did the story and characters. 


I liked Xanthus when he was in his lethal Dagonion-warrior mode but when he was around Sara it all fell apart and he was kind of… lame. 
Sara never really interested me aside from the fact she’s been in a wheelchair her entire life. That could’ve made for a pretty interesting character if not for the fact that she was completely dull. Also, she has a freaking tail and she thinks her legs are just deformed? Girl… just no. I really didn’t get that. And don’t get me started on their relationship. The insta-love and no development in the story and characters just killed the book for me. The side characters weren’t also all that great for me to read about. I loathed Sara’s mother. I mean, seriously… what’s wrong with that woman? I won’t go into detail but throwing your four or five year old child off the cliffs into the ocean to send her back to her father is seriously messed up. If anything, I liked Gretchen, Sara’s best friend the most of anyone in this book and she was only in it in a couple of scenes.


So all in all, this book was pretty ‘meh’ for me. It had a lot of promise at the beginning but in the end it led me down. When I reached 50% I was so bored that at first I didn’t want to continue but I read on anyway because I really did want to finish. I do know other people liked this story more but for me it didn’t do a lot and sadly enough I wouldn’t recommend it to people. 

About the Author:





I write many types of fiction–fantasy, romance, paranormal, horror, sick notes… I have a novel signed by Clean Teen Publishing. It’s a YA paranormal romance of the deep sea variety. I have a sequel afflicting my dreams and begging to be written. I am also working on a ghost story with a romantic twist.


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