REVIEW: Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson

Summary:
17-year-old Lila has two secrets she's prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just be 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 Lia 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 realises 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...

Title: Hunting Lila

Author: Sarah Alderson

Series: Lila- 1

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

Date of Release: August 5th 2011

Pages: 306

Review:

Okay, this book was just... I have no words to describe it. If I had to give it one sentence: suspense-filled-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-dark-guns-blazing-with-bad-ass-villians-and-awesome-powers! (does that count?)

The cover is gorgeous, it reminds me of a horror movie. Her red shoes and blue dress stand out against the dullness of the surrounding colours drawing immediate attention to her and leading you to question why and what she is running from.

Lila witnessed her mother's murder. After being moved halfway across the world with only her father and leaving her brother and his best friend behind, she is alone and soon discovers her special powers accidentally when her emotions are strong. After being mugged and nearly killing them by controlling a knife to their eye, Lila races back to her brother in fear, whom she has not seen in three years, to escape that madness of her life and gain back some normality. But, Demos and his team have been tracking her every move and begin to advance on her, meaning she must run-like-the-wind to escape with her brothers best friend. During these events she also tries to uncover the mystery that is her brothers unit and what they really do behind all the lies and secrets.

Lila is 17 years old, halfway across the country and provides no explanation. She is very strong and always tries to do what she wants. She is always very determined, completely stubborn and thinks quickly-on-her-feet, she also uses her special ability very wisely and sensibly (except the jam roly poly... what is a jam roly poly? *Googles* oh, I found it! Oh man, I don't like jam...) As well as this, she is a very adorable character, especially with a crush on Alex. There was just one teeny tiny thing that I got a bit annoyed with... her obsession with Alex. It was freaky-worringly-stalkerish, okay she has a small medium-sized big huge okay fine, humungous crush on him which can seem a little obsessed at times. However, the other moments of them together were undoubtedly cute. Then we have her brother Jack and his best-friend Alex, they are both very alike. They both are over-the-top protective, but this just shows how big their love is for Lila, they both are very charming and both can have big soppy hearts at times! But when they are in the zone of bodyguard, yeah, lets just say I have never heard of such fierceness to protect someone.

This book is action packed, with lightning fast turns that hold you at the edge of the seat and some very surprising twists. I would love to tell you all about Demo's group (I could go on and on and on...) but I think it would give too much away :(

It is also more dark and mysterious than I expected, with a mound of secrets all piling onto each other and then collapsing into a big pile of mess. Then we have the unit, well, lets just say they need a serious talking to.

I highly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the next book in the series,

Losing Lila, Yippeeeeeee!