Wednesday 2 July 2014

Review: Hidden by Megg Jensen

I received Hidden from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.


The mystery enshrouding Hutton’s Bridge is as impenetrable as the fog that descended at its borders eighty years ago. Each year, three villagers enter the mist searching for answers. No one ever returns.

Then a dragon falls from the sky to the town square, dead—the first glimpse of an outside world that has become nothing more than a fairy tale to Hutton’s Bridge. Except to Tressa.

Tressa grew up with Granna’s stories of the days before the fog fell. When Granna dies, leaving Tressa without any family, Tressa ventures into the fog herself, vowing to unravel the foul magic holding Hutton’s Bridge captive. 

What she discovers beyond the fog endangers the lives of everyone she loves.


Sucker for dragons?
*raises hand*

I really enjoyed Hidden.

Tessa's great grandmother Sophie is the last living person in her village to remember the day the adults disappeared and the fog came. Since then, nobody stepped into the fog and came out alive. The fog lived up to every creepy expectation I had including what makes it, what's in it and what's on the other side.

When Sophie dies, Tessa, Bastion and Connor leave the village as other trios have regularly done for decades. They expect their step into the fog will be their last though each leaves with the hope it won't.

In their quest to get help and save their village from a deadly illness, they find things they didn't expect.

Nobody is completely good. Each has their own flaws and gives us reason to judge them. I felt free to make up my own mind about the characters which allowed me to either cheer them on or shake my head, wondering why they don't avoid the wrong choice. (cue ominous music)

And the antagonist? Didn't like her at all, didn't feel I was supposed to and yes, I really wanted her to get it in the end.

I also liked the fighting and of course the dragons. The fog doesn't extend forever and I don't think the true reason the village was hidden is revealed. I'm more than sufficiently intrigued to need the next in the series, Hunted, and if it were out now I'd be nose deep in it.

Recommended for older YA readers. I wouldn't for my twelve year old due to the obvious off-sceen sex but in a few years that will change to a definite yes.

Four dragons out of five.

Loved the dragons and the heroine. I would have loved more foreshadowing but the pace, mystery and creepiness moved things along just fine.