Supremacy by Christin Lee (Supremacy; 1)

Synopsis:

Kate Parker, is a 17 year old senior living in Texas. She’s on the swim team, has two incredible best friends, and a passion for saving animals. She falls hard when she meets a mysterious and fascinating guy named Lucas. He has a sexy accent and a killer smile. However, she sees unexplained pain and anger in his dark brown eyes. He claims he’s a foreign exchange student from Spain who is attending the local University—Kate knows there’s more to his story than that. She works hard to discover who he is—what he is.

I received this book from the author for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

Review:

Supremacy is the first book to a coming YA series that holds surprises and romance on an equal scale.

High school romances are a hit or miss with me. I do enjoy a good amount of them, but it’s tough to know if I’ll like one or not. Supremacy is very much a high school romance for the first 35% of the novel. The synopsis really isn’t that informative on what exactly is going on this book, so honestly, I thought it was going to turn into a vampire/werewolf love story during the first several chapters, but I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be a more Dystopian twist than a paranormal twist. So that instantly improved my opinion of the book.

But, there is still a lot that I didn’t care for. For one, the high school romance aspect was very typical. The main character is the most beautiful girl in school, impeccably smart, has a gorgeous best girl friend and her best guy friend is on the football team–also gorgeous. She meets a dark, mysterious, and drop-dead gorgeous stranger, feels electricity and bam, they’re in-love, sneaking around, she’s ignoring common sense and it all actually turns out okay.

I’m not gonna lie, I almost dropped the book during the first half because it’s bad when you agree more with the parents of the characters than the main characters themselves, BUT, I pushed through it and the second half was MUCH better than the first. I truly wish the book would have just gotten to the adventure part from the beginning.

However, though the plot shifted from starry-eyed teens to a karate-kicking adventure, there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding the mysterious plot and a lot of it doesn’t quite make sense to me. Plus, the book ended with one heck of a cliffhanger RIGHT in the middle of when the plot was finally getting good. So I felt sorely jipped. I suffered through a large amount of oogling and “pleasure” (that word was terribly overused…) and then when the action and plot finally got pretty good, it just ended in the middle of a scene. I like cliffhangers, when they’re done well and a book two is on the way. This one was not done well and was released in 2016, so 4 years and still no book two.

Some of the characters were pretty good and well developed. I liked the background characters more than the main characters, and honestly I think Steven (Kate’s best guy friend) deserved to be treated better by the author than he was. I don’t want to include any spoilers, but his decisions and actions towards the center of the book didn’t feel consistent with his nature at the beginning of the book. And it actually made me sad.

To end on a good note however, I love the beauty that the author included about Earth and the descriptions of the sun and landscapes. Those scenes captured me right away and I thought they were incredibly well-written.

As for content to be aware of, there is some very mild cursing and deaths (not detailed). The romance consists of a few deep and detailed kisses, butt grabbings, admiring bodies in swimsuits, and tender touches.

So overall, I give it 2 out of 5 stars.