Book Review 4- I Am Number Four

Book Review of I Am Number Four By Pittacus Lore

            2/5 stars- This book, oh this book. Okay so the thing is this book isn’t by Pittacus Lore. Pittacus is fictional. However, James Fray is real. You know James Fray, he’s that guy who wrote a biography about his life that was actually fictional and then lied to Opera about it. I’m going to be honest here, the history of this author and the way this book was written had me a little biased. I’m going to try to review this based purely on story.

            The story is okay, the characters are okay, everything is okay, but not great. It has a lot of action in it, but I was never too entertained by it.  The romance bordered on cheesy, but never fully crossed the line. Everything was just mediocre to me. 

            The characters were tolerable, I didn’t feel attached to any particular one though. There is one thing that bugs me though. John is never described from what I remember. Not once in book one are his physical characteristics given to me.
            John’s personality isn’t that spectacular either. The only time he shows an alien characteristic is when he’s with Sarah (Who he’s freakishly in love with), and proceeds to act like a lovesick little schoolgirl. These feeling at least get an explanation with him being from a different species and culture. At least I thought so but Sarah is really attached to him to. I could just say, “Well she’s a girl and girls are different when it comes to romance,” but Henri clearly said humans do not love the way the super powered aliens do. Yet Sarah seems really certain about this relationship. She doesn’t even freak out when John says he’s an alien. So my guess is either this relationship is somehow making her evolve up to John’s level so she can love like he can love, or she’s just a teenage girl who will probably get over him eventually. I’m not sure.

            As for the alien aspect, well they are from space, and that’s about it. Any other weird traits they have is due to magic, which would be fine, but this magic is pretty bland and broad. I’m all for Sy-Fi Fantasy crossover, but with this I felt like the alien aspect was overshadowed by the magic aspect. The magic itself wasn’t that unique either, and it was difficult for me to grasp the way this race worked. The culture was interesting at times, and excused the cheesy romance, but overall it was boring.  As for the enemy aliens, they want to destroy all life on earth so they can steal the resources themselves and then they’ll move on to the next planet…I’m bored just telling you this.

            Maybe it was my A.D.D, but I never fully enjoyed this book, and I really wanted to. The characters weren’t complete idiots all the time, and I understood why John didn’t want to move away from his friends. It was selfish, but I understand how that would be hard for someone. There were even moments where I felt worried. But in the end, I couldn’t lie to myself, this book was blander then plain oatmeal.