The Key by Felicia Rogers

The Key by Felicia Rogers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a sweet story of love and loss, betrayal and redemption, and hopes and dreams.

This book is about Maddie, a teenage girl who is relatively new at school, having moved in with her great-grandmother after the death of her parents a few months before. Maddie is very lonely, having trouble making friends at her new school and grieving for her parents, and she keeps to herself. Then one day, not one but two new guys show up at school and show Maddie attention, maybe too much attention. Chase is the “good boy,” and a very likable character. Chase feels very protective of Maddie from their first meeting, although he has no idea why, and Maddie quickly falls for him, too. Dougal is the “bad boy.” He is very secretive and won’t stop staring at Maddie. He makes her and Chase both quite uncomfortable with all of his attention to her. Chase and Dougal are both jealous of each other and are vying for Maddie's attention, but for very different reasons.

I liked that this story was told from three different points of view, Maddie’s, Chase’s and Dougal’s. We always knew what was going on even though the characters didn’t. I also liked that the author took a different take on shifters instead of going with the usual werewolves or some other animal. I really liked the whole concept of The Key, which I won’t go into because it will give too much away!

There wasn’t much I didn’t like about this book, but I would have loved to see the ending drawn out a bit more. Everything seemed to be resolved very quickly, and I think there could have been more put into the ending scenes. Another thing that bothered me was the formal writing style during dialog. Conversations seemed to be forced. Nobody talks the formal way these characters did, especially teenagers. I did find a couple of inconsistencies in the book (view spoiler)[ At one point Dougal (Doran) tells Maddie that he pulled her from the fire that killed her parents, and then a few chapters later she was surprised to “discover” this for herself. (hide spoiler)] that confused me for a second or two, but overall this was a good story and I really enjoyed it.

View all my reviews