50 Book Challenge 2012, Book 33

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (collective pseudonym of James Frey and Jobie Hughes)

Firstly, a technical note for people who read this on the Kindle. I don't know if it's universal, but my version had pages with the first line of each chapter and nothing else as a sort of preface to the actual book starting. Also, every single incidence of a double "L" in text dropped the second letter L. Al  the people fal ing into wal s occasional y got to be distracting.

Now, I saw the movie last year without knowing it was first a book and the only real impact seeing the movie had on my read was my mind inserted Tim Olyphant, Alex Pettyfer and that chick from Glee into my visual for the characters of Henri, John and Sarah as I read them.

This is a YA novel and the romanticism (and therefore frequent stupidity) from John over Sarah made me feel like vomiting pretty consistently. It also made me question why Henri didn't push harder for them to leave when signs of trouble came up (though the last two chapters offer the promise there's an actual logical reason for this--to be revealed in the second book, which I wil  probably eventual y read.)

I enjoyed the book over-al  though. It was entertaining and did a real decent job explaining its back-story. I would have liked a little more depth into the psyche of many of the characters though. Sam is much more ful y developed in the film than in the book.

I give the book a solid B.