Book Review: Radiance by Alyson Noel

Title: Radiance
Series: Riley Bloom #1
Author: Alyson Noel
Publisher: Macmillian Children's Books
Publication Date: 24th August 2011
Pages: 183
Special Features: 1st Chapter of Shimmer
GoodReads Average Rating: 3.55

Riley has crossed the bridge into the afterlife—a place called Here, where time is always Now. She has picked up life where she left off when she was alive, living with her parents and dog in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. When she’s summoned before The Council, she learns that the afterlife isn’t just an eternity of leisure. She’s been assigned a job, Soul Catcher, and a teacher, Bodhi, a possibly cute, seemingly nerdy boy who’s definitely hiding something. They return to earth together for Riley’s first assignment, a Radiant Boy who’s been haunting a castle in England for centuries. Many Soul Catchers have tried to get him to cross the bridge and failed. But all of that was before he met Riley . . .

 I will honestly say that I was quite disappointed with this book.
I had first read Evermore, which is the first book in Alyson Noel's more popular series The Immortals, Evermore happens to be the book where Riley the main character of Radiance, appears as Ever's younger sister, who is a ghost.
She was my favorite character in Evermore, which was the main thing which attracted me to reading this book. She seemed like a pretty awesome and funny character. But this did not follow through in Radiance, she is quite annoying, mean and I kind of just wanted to hit her, but I guess you can say she does well at portraying 12 year old girls.
Riley also quickly goes to judge her guide, Bodhi, as a dork, just from how he looks, but there is no evidence in the way he acts to support this, and well also supports my reason to hating Riley.

The writing in the book is set in first person, from Riley's perspective, the words and writing style used with in the book, was almost perfect for her, informal and chatty, but I came across some complex words which would not be used by a 12yr old.

The book was short, and lacked any sort of decent story-line, I do personally believe it could of been improved by making the book longer. At the beginning there was the usual 50 page introduction to the book (which was more than a quarter of the book), then it went straight into the story, where as I believe a decent book slowly progresses in the central story-line and problem.

The whole trying to convince ghosts to cross the bridge and into the afterlife/heaven, was just not believable it was too easy and silly.
Riley also had to leave her parents to go and fulfill the job she receives, but has no problem with that at all, when a 12yr old in fact would, the writer almost tried to forced Riley's character to be much older than she is.

The story had nothing that seemed to pull me into it, and I was more of skim-reading the last 100pages, than I was reading it.
The reason this book did not receive a 1 star rating, was because it was quite bad, but not horrible, it just managed to cling onto being read-able and would be a good book for younger readers.

I give this book....