Review: Embrace

Embrace by Cherie Colyer
Release Date ~ December 20, 2011
Omnific Publishing
e-ARC received from: Omnific Publishing for blog tour

Goodreads Synopsis:
Sometimes you end up hurting the ones you love.
You find you can't save them or yourself.
Madison is familiar enough with change, and she hates everything about it. Change took her long-term boyfriend away from her. It caused one of her friends to suddenly hate her. It’s responsible for the death of a local along with a host of other mysterious happenings. But when Madison meets a hot new guy, she thinks her luck is about to improve.
Madison is instantly drawn to the handsome and intriguing Isaac Addington. She quickly realizes he’s a guy harboring a secret, but she’s willing to risk the unknown to be with him.
Her world really spins out of control, however, when her best friend becomes delusional, seeing things that aren’t there and desperately trying to escape their evil. When the doctors can’t find the answers, Madison seeks her own.
Nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover.
Dangerous, intoxicating, and darkly romantic, Embrace is a thriller that will leave you spellbound.

The book description had me really excited for a dark and twisted psychological thriller, that would have me guessing at every page turn.

That description left me with a drastically different impression of what would happen in the book, but if I look past that impression then Embrace ended up being a very interesting book.

1. Mystery aspect:
   I LOVED trying to figure out who was behind the mysterious and creepy events, and my guesses were entirely off until it was all fully revealed; although I found the clues to be very subtle and well done so it wasn't obvious who the culprit was!
2. Secondary characters:
   I liked Madison well enough, but I thought some of the secondary characters really ended up stealing the show. Josh, Kaylee, and Isaac (if he can be considered a secondary character) were all some of my favourites, along with Kevin. There were just enough character to keep things interesting without becoming confusing, and each had an important role to play but were well thought out and presented. They were so well-rounded, and played integral parts to the story which really pushed it along so that it was well-paced and fully fleshed out. Isaac actually ended up being one of my favourite characters, because he was continually surprising me and didn't turn out the way I expected him to be...

My only disappointment is that I really expected it to be darker than it was, but at the same time I'm kind of happy that I ended up being wrong because I did enjoy the way that thing sturned out. Some of the big secrets and psychological aspects of it ended up being more typical and predictable than I thought they were, and it really was more paranormal than I believed it would be. I liked the romance plot, and while happy with how it turned out in the end, there was a brief love triangle than came across as somewhat forced. But besides that, I loved the love story that was naturally weaved into the overall plot.