ELEGY - TARA HUDSON - REVIEW

Book: Elegy
Author: Tara Hudson
Publisher: HarperCollins Childrens
ISBN: 9780007437290
Rating: B

A stranded spirit, and a love story that crosses the divide between the living and the dead...Despite everything she's lost in the last few months, Amelia's new half-life feels something like a victory. That is, until the demons of High Bridge make their ultimate move: rising from Hell and killing Wilburton's residents, one by one, to get to Amelia. When the death toll reaches too close to home, Amelia must make a horrible choice. Does she rely on the help of Joshua and his friends, or does she sacrifice herself...for the final time?

Elegy. Hmmm... Although in the end this was good I feel like this series has gone downwards, not up. Needless to say I did like book 3 and I'm going to go over everything that there really is to talk about.

So book three is the final book in the series and Amelia and Josh and Jillian yet face the same problem again. The dark still wants here, Jillian and Josh are in danger again and she must save the day. It was different from the other book yet still a little samey and although I didn't mind that one thing that did bug me is the fact Amelia doesn't learn from her mistakes but that's not really a fault with the book, come to think of it. That's just her character.

Anyway the book starts of promising and naturally this is the final book so it's all about final showdowns and it was really captivating. Hudson has definitely, within this series, shown her talent to be able to write many different genres well and the story line worked for me. I liked it, and it kept me guessing. It never got confusing or repeated itself but the amount of deaths and if I may add, unessacery deaths were overwhelming in this and sometimes I think you need to draw a line.

The setting in this shifted back to both Amelias and Joshua's hometown and it made sense, as the main plot line was focused around high bridge and bringing it down. I liked the fact that we went back to old places because it really helped us to understand the stories and the emotion behind all of the happenings and understand the light and dark better, in general.

The characters pretty much stayed the same in this which was nice. With the increase of characters in book 2 we were so busy getting know them there was no space to develop or uncovers true colours of other characters. Because the characters were pretty much the same in this we started to see peoples true colours and what they were really like. In fact we got a much better glimpse into the both Joshua and Amelia's past but more Amelia. I felt like this was really good and whilst other characters did come into play it was primarily based back onto Amelia, Josh and Jillian like in book 1 which leas back to my point of growing our knowledge bases on the characters so we ca really connect with them.

As usual Hudson's writing was a dream to read. Description flowed as did the story but what really stuck out to me was her world building. In this book there was a lot more of inter world interaction and they way she used words to craft these worlds in my mind was just perfection. I loved the way she formed the rooms of hell in high bridge and I would've loved to see more of the light worlds but from what she wrote I fell in love with the different places. Hudson had a knack for description, especially with places.

Overall this was the perfect end to this series. Well the ending, I'm not sure if that's how I would have done it, but however it was a beautiful and magical ending and this series had left me speechless. I'll definitely be coming back to it in the future.