Review: The Turning - What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis

The Turning: What Curiosity Kills (Book 1) by Helen Ellis
Young Adult Urban Fantasy
Sourcebooks Fire (May 1, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-1402238611
224 pages
ARC provided by the publisher

Synopsis from Amazon:

Nobody can know your secret.
Nobody can know your power.
But if nobody knows who you are to begin with...what's stopping you?

I whisper, "What's so special about me all of a sudden?"

Nick says, "The Turning."

Mary feels different, but can't explain why. The fainting, the strange cravings...and worse, the things she's noticed about her body.

Mary doesn't know where to turn. If she tells her parents or her sister, she'll risk losing everything. She has no other family, no way of knowing if what she's going through is normal. Everyone she's ever known and loved could reject her...

Prior to receiving this ARC, I hadn't heard anything regarding this book or author Helen Ellis. I'm almost glad that I didn't have any preconceived notions toward it because I'm pretty sure that, if I had, they would have been blown away pretty quickly. My feelings about this book are mixed to say the least, but I'll do my best to to describe them for you.

I've read plenty of books about shapeshifters and weres. I was sure that there wasn't anything new to me in that field. Ellis showed me that I was poorly mistaken with her cat shifters. That's right, cats. Not the big leopard/lion/tiger-esque types. No, I mean the household variety. The way they are portrayed in the turning is as some potentially dangerous species. I'm still trying to parse whether or not I can take it seriously.

Regardless, the book is interesting. The main character Mary and her best friend/sister Octavia are unique characters in the YA genre. While they currently live a semi-privileged life in New York's Upper East Side, the both hail from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mary is from the south and still has a hint of her accent. After being neglected by her parents seven or eight years ago, she was adopted by her new family. Around the same time an African-American eight-year-old, Octavia, happened to lose her parents and be chosen by the same couple as Mary. The two sisters are the same age and incredibly close. It's interesting the strain that there relationship undergoes when the "turning" begins to overtake Mary. Octavia, who is deathly afraid of cats due to an incident in her past, struggles with a newfound fear and trepidation directed towards her sister. Despite this, it's clear that the two really love one another. It must be Mary's love for her sister that allows her to overlook Octavia's psuedo-ghetto attitude and slang. Being a middle-class black person myself, I understand the issue of wanting to embrace your "blackness" but I think that Octavia took it a step too far, almost into parody territory. I almost fell out of my chair when she used the phrase "wiggida, wiggida, whack" (yes, really). Even Mary thinks it's ridiculous.

Although Mary and Octavia are pretty strong characters, the majority of the secondary players are not. As of writing this, I can't really even remember much about their friends, a pair of twins that attend the same private school, Mary's crush Nick Martin, the stereotypical hot (and sort of dull) guy at school, Ling Ling, another stereotypical mean girl, and the requisite reckless (and semi-psycho) bad boy Yoon.

Regardless of (or maybe due to) some the "you're kidding me" moments that I had, I still found the book entertaining. Maybe it was the cheese factor or maybe it was Ellis's genuinely good sense of humor. Whatever it was, I wouldn't be averse to reading the follow-up. I'd probably check it out from the library though.

Grade: C
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