I’m not entirely sure where I got my copy of Awakening (Talentborn, #1), by C.S. Churton. Calibre tells me I’ve had it about a year and a half, and I’d guess I picked it up from a Bookfunnel promo or something similar. I read it today as part of my Awakening Challenge, where I’ve set out to read eight books named Awakening. This was number six.

When she hit rock bottom…

…Anna did the unthinkable.

Would the ring she stole change her life?

In the days that followed her desperate act, Anna’s life turned upside down. Strange things began to happen, and she wondered if she was losing her mind. Alone in the world, who could she trust to help her sort out her newly discovered powers?

Scott says he has answers, but will she believe what he has to say?

The deeper she digs, the more she suspects the people helping her have their own agenda. Can she learn to control her powers, or will the AbGen Corporation betray her?

I’d say this was OK, not great but not horrid either. It’s fairly predictable, without any deviations from a pretty linear plot. The romance comes out of nowhere (except that you know it’s coming), it isn’t particularly well developed or anything. Then again, neither is anything else either.

But the book is an enjoyable enough read and the writing is perfectly readable. Though I thought it an odd muddle of UK and American English/culture. It’s obviously set in England, but every once in a while there would be an oddity in the language/plot—the waitress dependent on tips to make rent, for example, or referring to secondary school as high school, etc. I don’t know where the author is from, and maybe as an American married to an Englishman I’m extra sensitive to it, but it pulled me out of the story more than once.