Review: Taste by Kate Evangelista

Book: Taste by Kate Evangelista
Publisher: Crescent Moon Press
Pages: 259
Source: Review copy
Links: Goodreads | Amazon

At Barinkoff Academy, there's only one rule: no students on campus after curfew. Phoenix McKay soon finds out why when she is left behind at sunset. A group calling themselves night students threaten to taste her flesh until she is saved by a mysterious, alluring boy. With his pale skin, dark eyes, and mesmerizing voice, Demitri is both irresistible and impenetrable. He warns her to stay away from his dangerous world of flesh eaters. Unfortunately, the gorgeous and playful Luka has other plans.

When Phoenix is caught between her physical and her emotional attraction, she becomes the keeper of a deadly secret that will rock the foundations of an ancient civilization living beneath Barinkoff Academy. Phoenix doesn’t realize until it is too late that the closer she gets to both Demitri and Luka the more she is plunging them all into a centuries old feud.

Um. Hm. I'm at a loss for words (and it's not the good kind).

WHAT I LIKED:

• Taste actually had a unique paranormal twist!
• I come into this book expecting vampires galore, but I was completely wrong! (And so far off...) I love it when books surprise me like this, and this twist was pretty refreshing to read about than the usual angels, werewolves, etc.

• The world building = original.
• I can't go too into depth about the world building or else I'll spoil said paranormal twist, but I'm just going to say it was really cool. I loved reading about the world Evangelista created. It was addicting, and it made me crave for more!
• I really also liked the terms in this book! It seemed Russian inspired, and just really awesome. (I might be wrong about the Russian inspiration part though.)

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

• Phoenix McKay, please put a sock in it.
• If you don't get my saying, it's basically "shut up". Good Lord, this girl whined for days and days and days on end about her past. Half of her dialogue was filled with inane, stupid questions and much much sniffling. 
• And that whole "I need to put up an armor so no one can get close to me" kind of thing? Yeah, I've seen too much of that already. I understand that her past was heartbreaking (and it was a bit for me), but she needs to live and move on.

•   Oh joy, there's two dimensional characters! *sarcasm intended*
• The cast of Taste completely fell flat for me. There was hardly any character development with the main cast and it just didn't work for me. They all were extremely simple and easy to figure out, which is not my cup of tea.

•  Show, don't tell!
• Remember how I said Phoenix was just filled with all these questions? Yeah, a good majority of them was asking to explain this new world she was in, and lo and behold, the answer was... that's right, you guessed it: information dumping! 
• Instead of the information dumping, I really wished she showed more of the world instead of through words exchanged in conversation. I'm a huge fan of world building in books, and I just felt let down when I was reading this.

•  The writing was... okay.
• I don't obsess over the writing like I do with world building, but the writing was mediocre at best. It was very simple, and the dialogue between characters didn't feel natural at times.

THE VERDICT:

• Taste had a lot of potential but unfortunately, it just didn't live up to it for me.