Book Review - Elana Johnson's Elevated

As promised, here's my review of Elana Johnson's Elevated. Five Stars!!!!

Here's the blurb:

The last person seventeen-year-old Eleanor Livingston wants to see on the elevator—let alone get stuck with—is her ex-boyfriend Travis, the guy she's been avoiding for five months.

Plagued with the belief that when she speaks the truth, bad things happen, Elly hasn’t told Trav anything. Not why she broke up with him and cut off all contact. Not what happened the day her father returned from his deployment to Afghanistan. And certainly not that she misses him and still thinks about him everyday.

But with nowhere to hide and Travis so close it hurts, Elly’s worried she won’t be able to contain her secrets for long. She’s terrified of finally revealing the truth, because she can’t bear to watch a tragedy befall the boy she still loves.

Here's what I thought:
I have never read an in-verse novel before, I don't read poetry, I don't even read the little snippets of lyrics or poetry at the beginning of chapters. I thought reading an in-verse story would be incredibly tedious for my unexpanded little mind! Oh, so the opposite - at least in the case of Elevated.

Think of it this way: take a full novel and strip away everything that doesn't matter, everything that takes away the reader's ability to visualize, to put themselves in the story. Leave nothing but emotion. Raw, real, only what matters.

This is Elevated. I still can't speak to other similar formats, but this was gripping. The intense emotion Elly feels because of her circumstance, her friends' situations, how she believes it's all her fault, how she's paralyzed and afraid to make choices. And the physical tie to being stuck in an elevator with the one person she is afraid to hurt, but cares the most for.

This is Elevated. Read it. You won't regret it.

Buy Links:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo |  iTunes |

On Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18947183-elevated

Praise for ELEVATED:

"ELEVATED will take you on an emotionally gripping journey through the highs and lows of first love."

~Carolee Dean, author of Take Me There and Forget Me Not

"Poignant, raw, and intense, ELEVATED is a novel that will grip your heart and linger in your mind long after you turn the last page."

~Stasia Ward Kehoe, author of Audition and The Sound of Letting Go

 

About Elana Johnson: Elana Johnson’s work, including Possession, Surrender, Abandon, and Regret, published by Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster), is available now everywhere books are sold. Her popular ebook, From the Query to the Call, is also available for free download, as well as a Possession short story, Resist. School teacher by day, Query Ninja by night, you can find her online at her personal blog or Twitter. She also co-founded the Query Tracker blog, and contributes to the League of Extraordinary Writers.

Social Media Links:

Website/blog: http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/