Die for Me by Amy Plum
4 out of 5
I'm going to get this part out of the way first. Though I do not at all believe that all paranormal YA books are only copying Twilight (like it was the very first paranormal YA book), I find there are a lot of very basic similarities in this book.
- A teen girl moves to the place where she's previously spent all her summers.
- The girl, who feels she's only mildly attractive, finds herself the object of a super hot guy's obsession.
- All his friends think she's the hottest thing ever as well.
- She's super obsessed at first sight by the guy as well and after a few prickly conversations, they go out to dinner.
- She becomes super close to the guy's sister-like friend that lives with him and becomes like a little sister to all the guys in the house.
- After a little research, she stumbles across their family secret and is let into their confidence.
- She's let in because the guy has never felt like this before and his family can see how good she is for him.
Spoilers ahead
Kate and her sister Georgia move to Paris from New York after the death of their parents. While Georgia is coping, Kate just can't get over it. She spends all her time in a cafe, reading to escape the real world.
At this cafe, she first sees Vincent (honestly I wish just one time the guy would be named something like George or Bob) with his friends. She thinks he's the most beautiful guy she's ever seen and he seems to notice her too. But he acts like a jerk to her the first couple of times until she's almost ready to give up on him. She still hopes to see him every time she goes to the cafe, though, until it's closed by a piece of the wall falling and almost killing her.
Eventually, Vincent and Kate get around to talking beyond him being a jerk and he asks her to hang out. They do and everything is great until she sees his friend Jules get hit by a train. Vincent leaves Jules to the police and takes her away from the scene. Kate's appalled by his reaction to his friend's death and thinks he has some criminal past that requires he stay away from cops. I started to feel better about Kate here. She tells him off and says she never wants to see him again. Good for her. It's exactly what she should do.
During the course of her research for history, though, she comes across pictures of Vincent and his other friend Ambrose from the late 60s and a news article saying they died in a fire. She starts to think something is weird and goes to confront him about what is going on. Honestly, I don't know if my first reaction to seeing the same things in the paper would be to think something fishy was going on. I'd probably think that it was a very similar-looking relative in the picture, especially seeing it lists a different name. Can you imagine how grainy that image would be? A 60s newspaper you are viewing on Microfiche would not be that clear.
But anyway, Kate's first reaction is to think something is going on and she goes to his house to find out what it is. For some reason, she's let into the house by Jean-Baptiste, the owner of the house and head revenant (though she doesn't know this yet). Why, I have no idea, seeing Vincent said they were not supposed to invite people to the house. But he does and she wanders until she finds Vincent's room and Vincent himself, dead on the bed.
Naturally she freaks and has to basically be held captive in the house so she can't leave and tell anyone. I guess she figures she wouldn't get very far anyway, because she complies. The next day, she's taken back to Vincent's room where he is alive and well. With no other choice, they tell her their secret. They are revenants- high fuctioning zombie-like creatures that are destined to save people, sometimes resulting in their own deaths. They reanimate after 3 days when they die. They also "die" for 3 days once a month or so.
Kate began to lose me some here. She couldn't seem to understand the concept right away. On top of that, the explanations seemed to be too much for her to take in all at once. She's supposed to be a smart girl. While I get that her parents' death traumatized her, she should be able to listen and understand better.
Now that she realizes that Vincent isn't the criminal she thought he was, she decides to give him another chance. And things are going great till she sees yet another of his friends killed. This time she freaks because she knows that it could happen to Vincent and she couldn't watch him die, even if it was temporarily. So, as miserable as it makes her feel, she tells him that she just can't be with him. For the next month or so, she's like a zombie (haha) and, even though several of his friends and Jean-Baptiste all try to convince her to give him another chance, she won't until she sees him standing outside her house in the rain. As creepy as that sounds, it didn't come off that way in the book.
They talk and Vincent tells her that he will hold off on his impulse to save people and possibly die for her. Really, I might get where Kate is coming from, but she's being selfish here. Not only is she asking him to ignore the compulsion that is the reason for his very existence (even if it is his idea), she's essentially condemning the other people Vincent might have saved in the future to die. Vincent even tells her there is another revenant/human couple and that the human understands the revenant's impulse and doesn't stop her from dying. Here is where Kate should make the decision to accept all of this for love. But she doesn't. Instead she like "well good because I couldn't handle you dying over and over." Also, there is the superficial reaction of the human being 80 and the revenant being young and hot (Their age resets when they die saving someone. If they don't, they age up). Like I said, I get it, but still think she's being selfish.
The on/off of their relationship takes up most of the book, but there are bad guys. While Vincent and his friends came back because they sacrificed themselves for others, there are other people (numas) that died after betraying someone. It is their mission to cause people to die. The leader, Lucien, has ties to Vincent and uses Kate and her sister to get to him. They are lured into a trap, leaving Kate to protect Vincent's dead body while his consciousness is floating around with the others. But he gets back in time to take over Kate's body and save himself and Kate. A little convenient, but because this concept was mentioned earlier in the book I was able to accept it. Lucien is killed and burned so he didn't come back. Everything is good. While she's told not to, Kate fills in Georgia on what is going on because she trusts her.
I actually liked this book. While I could find some fault, it was still very good. I thought the author did a really good job of acknowledging some of the more convenient things that happened. They actually mention that Jean-Baptiste broke his own rule and let Kate into the house, leading her to discover their secret. The dialogue was pretty realistic. Kate also felt like a smarter heroine than a lot of others, making painful decisions for the good of herself or her sister, though I did think she was whiny and selfish sometimes. I'm not sure where the books is going to go now, though. Other than the threat of the now leader-less numa, there's not much left.
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