Review: Teardrop by Lauren Kate

Lauren Kate

Title: Teardrop
Author: Lauren Kate
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
Published: October, 2013 by Doubleday
Pages: 441
Find it at: Flipkart / Amazon
My Rating: 4/5!




From the Book's Cover
Never, ever cry... Seventeen-year-old Eureka won't let anyone close enough to feel her pain. After her mother was killed in a freak accident, the things she used to love hold no meaning. She wants to escape, but one thing holds her back: Ander, the boy who is everywhere she goes, whose turquoise eyes are like the ocean. 

And then Eureka uncovers an ancient tale of romance and heartbreak, about a girl who cried an entire continent into the sea. Suddenly her mother's death and Ander's appearance seem connected, and her life takes on dark undercurrents that don't make sense. 

Can everything you love be washed away?

My Thoughts!
Teardrop in its very essence is fantasy-based but talks mostly about humanness through its protagonist and many characters living in and around New Iberia. Just that Eureka and her mother Diana, are closely linked with an ancient, almost-forgotten myth. Eureka was nine when she, disturbed by her parents' squabble, shed tears and cried bitterly. That was also when Diana had slapped her for the first time and asked her never again to cry.

Eureka hadn't. Not even after losing her mother to a rogue wave that washed her away, a wave from which she had been miraculously saved, leaving her alone and devastated. She withdrew from the things she loved and desperately sought an escape. Ander, a mysterious boy with eyes like the ocean, bumps into her and she feels drawn to him, more than she'd like to accept. A few months later when Eureka inherits three items from Diana's will, she's confused, but holds them dearly: a book written in a language she cannot read, her mother's locket and a thunderstone wrapped in white gauze. 

Oh the gorgeousness of the cover *_*
The story moves at a gradual pace, introducing all characters, complete with their personalities and quirks, moving through the days as Eureka sees them pass by. She finally finds a seer-like woman who is capable enough to translate the book (titled, The Book of Love). Eureka's desperate to understand everything that links her to Diana and the mysteries of what she didn't know. She's also torn between Brooks, her childhood friend and Ander, the mysterious boy she can't help thinking about. 

The author's writing style is no doubt, gripping. It's a book very well written, though I found the beginning to be quite slow. But the book paces up as it reaches the halfway point and that is when I was hooked on to the book. The events became mysterious, there was action and unfolding of new ideas, and the best of all, it was not at all predictable. I mean, I wasn't personally trying to foresee or guess what the story might turn out to be, but whatever happened was not what I could have imagined. And this unpredictability is scattered everywhere, not just at the end. You cannot predict the fate of any of the characters, you don't know why a certain character is behaving in a certain weird way, it's hard to guess. And you're anyway so into the story that you wouldn't really stop to imagine or predict. 

This also could be because the main myth that is at the helm of everything, is revealed a lot later in the book, so readers have no idea beforehand as to where the story's being led. The basic storyline is something I found to be unique, although if you come out of your fantasy-induced mind and look at it from a practical view, you might find the idea a bit absurd. Eureka never cries, her tears are too important to be shed, and maybe too dangerous. She went through things too much for any one person to handle, yet she's been so strong as to never cry (apart from almost shedding a tear when Ander first bumped into her), but it's not that weird, because in the end she does, and it's explained quite well, and reasonably. We can just accept the story for what it is and bask in the emotions it makes us go through. :)

I also loved the portrayal of all characters, they just seemed 'complete', although Brooks seemed more mysterious than he should have been, but then his mysteriousness was important in the story. Still, a little more about the kind of relationship he shared with Eureka could have been explained through the narration of an incident or something. I was quite confused whether or not to trust him. Rhoda, Eureka's stepmom was just mean Rhoda, but someone who seemed mean to Eureka, and was otherwise a normal mom of two four-year old twins whom Eureka loved. This was what I found to be great, the characters' image is not shadowed by how Eureka sees them, giving them more depth and personality for the readers.

Overall, the book is worth a read, although it almost pains me to wait for the second book! I don't even know when it'll be out. The story's interesting, it grows a lot more as the book progresses and it has some beautiful lines, some of which are mentioned here: 

'Suffering is wisdom's schoolteacher' ~ Madame Blavatsky 

'Love. That which makes a life worth living. That which arrives to carry us where we need to go.' ~ The Book of Love

'"You think this is real?" Eureka asked.
"Nothing is real. There is only what we believe in and what we reject."'

'But sometimes, trust struck the intuition like a thunderbolt, fast and deep. Trust was mutual'

'Love was a dance floor, where everyone you loved left a mark behind.'

Recommended for: Fantasy lovers, YA readers 

Thankyou Random House publishers for this book! :)


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