Shift by Kim Curran

Shift by Kim Curran was quite a trip. It was slightly disturbing, but in a fantastic way and it was an incredible idea.

      16-year-old Scott Tyler was average, maybe even a loser. He had one kind-of-friend, his family argued, and he wasn’t really popular. At all. Then, one night he tries to climb the Pylon. One moment he’s scaling it, the next he’s laying on his back on the sidewalk with no idea how he got there. Aubrey, the most beautiful girl that Scott could imagine, tells him that he is a Shifter: one that can alter the decisions that he has made in the past with a single thought. However, Scott is extremely old to have only manifested his powers, which disappear around age 20. Aubrey is a part of ARES, a secret organization of Shifters, whose enemy is the SLF, who are basically anarchists. Scott believes that ARES has the best intents, but there may be something hiding on the shadows that they want to keep secret. Will Scott and Aubrey find out what is actually going on before they become victims themselves? Read and find out!

            First things first: the characters. Scott, the protagonist of the story, was not really likable in the first couple chapters of the story. I couldn’t really relate to him and I thought that he was kind of humdrum. However, once the story picked up, he became increasingly likable. He was hilarious, and when he was in danger, he became the sass-master. By the end of the book, I loved him. In the beginning, Scott was kind of a loser and he was really weak, but by the end he fund his own power and became more confident, so he was a really dynamic character. On the other hand, I loved Aubrey from the very beginning. She was really strong and she definitely wore the pants in their relationship. She was also witty and she had a level of confidence and power that Scott did not have. I definitely connected with her because she was awesome.

            Now for the plot/idea. I loved the idea of this book. It is something I had never heard of before, so it was fresh and new. The whole Shifting idea was a little confusing in the beginning, but Curran described it really well. She had a way with telling the story that made such a complicated topic seem like the easiest thing in the world. I also loved her British terms and slang (because I am not British I found them amusing).

The story took turns all over the place. I didn’t know what was going to happen and there were seemingly random events that occurred, but they all came together seamlessly in the end. The story and diction were AMAZING in this book. It was a tad disturbing at parts, which I thought was AWESOME. Cannibalism. That’s all I’m going to say about that. The single bad thing about this book was the first few chapters. I thought that they were a little slow, but that could have been because I was trying to read it during a very busy time, but once I started reading it for real, it was sweet. Once the end came, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted it to keep going. I’ll have a second please!

Shift was a great book! 4 1/2 Smileys!