REVIEW: Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

Pub. Date: August 4th 2011 (UK) April 10th 2012 (Canada)
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Pages: 318
Readership: Young adult
Genres: mystery, action, science fiction
Rating: ★★★★ 

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she's prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she's been in love with her brother's best friend, Alex, since forever. After a mugging exposes her unique ability, Lila decides to run to the only people she can trust - her brother and Alex. They live in Southern California where they work for a secret organisation called The Unit, and Lila discovers that the two of them are hunting down the men who murdered her mother five years before. And that they've found them. In a world where nothing and no one is quite as they seem, Lila quickly realizes that she is not alone - there are others out there just like her - people with special powers -and her mother's killer is one of them…

First of all I want to give a big thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me the book! It's my very first book received by a publisher so I was really excited to start it.

What I really enjoyed about Hunting Lila was that it had a just the right mix of mystery, suspense, action and romance. Add to that the paranormal/science fiction element and I was reeled right in. I won't lie, the first 100 or so pages took me a while to get into. I thought there was a bit too much of Lila pining over Alex, going on and on about how in love she was with him, how hot he was, how she was always daydreaming about him, etc. It got on my nerves for a while. I couldn't help but wonder how Lila was going to end up a kick ass heroine when she wouldn't stop pining and whining. I was glad to be proved wrong not long after. Lila is a great character. She's just a girl who lost her mum too young and was torn from two of the people she loved most in the world. She was alone for so long and to me, that's a factor as to why she was so adamant and borderline obsessive with her feelings over Alex. She just wanted someone to love her back, and not halfheartedly like her father who is never there. She loves so hard that it consumes her to the point it did in the beginning of the book and to a lesser extent in the end.

By page 150 it was un-put-down-able. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a curl up on the couch on a rainy day with a light read that likes to smile but also likes a bit of action. These are characters you root for, even the secondary ones. I love Suki so very much (so very, very much). Demos is a badass, Rachel is cringe worthy and I'd definitely want to be friends with the rest of Demos' gang.

I'm excited to see how much Lila grows in book 2. In book one, as I said, she was this lost girl who was in love with a boy for most of her life who was an ocean away. Now that she has a better grip on who she is and what she is I can't wait to see what Sarah has in store for her.

The book was a fun, light read. It was like I was watching a teen action movie in word form about a girl with a telekinetic ability that was in love with a boy just a little bit out of her reach. The entertainment value was high on the scale and that's what I wanted with this book, to be thoroughly entertained. I came away satisfied and wanting to read the second book right now.