REVIEW: NOBODY BY JENNIFER LYNN BARNES.

Title: Nobody
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Edition: Hardcover
Published: January 22, 2013
Publisher: Egmont
Pages: 393
Source: Won
Category: Romance, Sci-Fi
Trailer: not applicable.

Synopsis:

There are people in this world who are Nobody. No one sees them. No one notices them. They live their lives under the radar, forgotten as soon as you turn away.

That’s why they make the perfect assassins.

The Institute finds these people when they’re young and takes them away for training. But an untrained Nobody is a threat to their organization. And threats must be eliminated.

Sixteen-year-old Claire has been invisible her whole life, missed by the Institute’s monitoring. But now they’ve ID’ed her and send seventeen-year-old Nix to remove her. Yet the moment he lays eyes on her, he can’t make the hit. It’s as if Claire and Nix are the only people in the world for each other. And they are—because no one else ever notices them.

Nobody dramatically worn me out.

This is the book I won from Gecky Boz several months back together with Every Other Day. I don't know how to say it in a different way but I was again ecstatic to read this. If you have read the synopsis, you would understand how this had me anticipating it. The only problem with me though, I don't relay on ratings specially on Goodreads. I always want to see it myself whether a novel is good or a disaster. And I wished just for once, I took these ratings into consideration.

Claire is almost invisible to everyone since who knows when. No one gives her any attention at all. Its as if no one sees her or sense her or hears her, even her parents. She's so accustomed to it that she learns to imagine things to make herself feel that she matters at least. Until one day, when she senses someone looking at her for the first time, she was appalled because the guy points a gun at her and tries to kill her.

I loved and enjoyed Every Other Day. Barnes' take on protagonists that are always alone/broken/unloved is uniquely delivered but if one would try to read Every Other Day then Nobody (or the other way around), the pattern is too prominent. As I've said, I enjoyed Every Other Day. However, I was seriously tempted to mark Nobody as my first ever DNF. I haven't used this mark at all and I have been trying to finish reading books I started but Nobody tested my patience. I have too many issues with it that after reaching the first hundred and fifty pages, I knew I had to take time and contemplate whether to go on or stop at once. IT WAS WAY TOO SLOW. Slow. Slow. Slow. The turn of events happened after I think three hundred pages. Insta-love was there again (but the story can justify it at least), world-building was weak like I mean WHAT AND WHERE IS FADE, I wasn't sure if I should tag it as paranormal (because of the Sensors) or sci-fi (because of the experiments/drugs) or both, characters were indecisive and always at war with themselves AND the thing with the Nulls and Nobodies were confusing.

Nix claimed he's an assassin. But as I know more things about him, he wasn't able to prove that he's really an assassin. I don't know, I just felt he's emotionally disturbed. He's angsty, confused, used and all these he learned after he met Claire. What was so different with her that he never questioned the Institute's commands before? If he knows he's a Nobody, why didn't he question his existence? Why all of a sudden he had the need to protect Claire just because she never hurt anyone? He has all the resources around him to figure out what he is but he just unquestionable says yes to everything he's presented with. Totally unbelievable. And Claire. Just because someone sees you for the first time and builds you a bookshelf doesn't mean you have to fall in love! Totally makes my eyes roll and twitch. How is it even possible that your parents are normal human beings and their offspring is a Nobody? Like how can a decent parent go into the grocery and forget their daughter that they have to relay on a post it in their car to remember they have a child? UGH!!! I want to choke myself. AND AND let me say that how can a mother even let some big time old school organization experiment with her children? Totally twisted. I appreciated the fact that the power of the premise Barnes (I think) was trying to encapsulate in the novel was potentially adamant but IT. JUST. DIDN'T. WORK. like it was supposed to. It didn't work for me at all.

I have so much to say about this novel but whatever I wrote are the major points that ticked me off.

Nobody would have been a strong sci-fi/paranormal novel. The originality of the plot was too strong but the loop holes are much stronger that it pulled it all down the drain. I tried so much to like it but I could make myself fade and pretend that its an extension of me. I just couldn't.

VERDICT:

"Do you know what I thought when you tried to kill me? The first time? I thought, How can somebody want me dead when no one knows I'm alive?"