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Title & Author:
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
Publisher:
HarperTeen
Publication Date:
August 25, 2009
Pages:
416

Plot:

Characters:

Writing:

Overall:

Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns . . .

Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one attacks her boyfriend—ruining any chance of him taking her to prom—Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient Cloisters the hunters have used for centuries. However, all is not what it seems at the Cloisters. Outside, unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from bone-covered walls that vibrate with terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to her growing attraction to a handsome art student . . . an attraction that could jeopardize everything. - Amazon

I admit – I was hesitant at first about reading Rampant. I mean, killer unicorns? And my boyfriend, who’s really nice about the fact that I read young adult, would not stop making fun of me for reading a book about unicorns, so that didn’t help. I picked it up, read the first chapter, and then got another book in the mail and read that first.

But really, once I grasped the fact that this book is NOT about My Little Pony-esque unicorns, I really got into it. There’s a lot of really neat history thrown into Rampant, which is something that always excites me in a book. The action scenes are super tense because I could never figure out the outcome ahead of time, which was awesome.

I love Diana Peterfreund’s writing style. Astrid’s narration is so clear and easy to follow, and the only points I ever got confused on were during the scenes that talked about secondary characters that were hardly mentioned. The action scenes are very well done and detailed so that I was able to follow the action without getting lost. I find that normally in action scenes in a book, I kind of skip words and get confused (much like really shaky action scenes in a movie) but in Rampant, it was very easy for me to follow along.

The storyline really reminded me of Buffy, seventh season. A bunch of girls who didn’t really know who they were are called together to fight evil unicorns? Yeah, definitely reminds me of Buffy. Without the vampires. But in a good way! I love Buffy :)

There was a large variety of characters, which could get a little confusing at times because some characters weren’t mentioned very often so I forgot who they were, but the majority of the characters were really unique with very different backgrounds from each other. Astrid was a very normal and likable character. She just wanted to fit in and have a boyfriend, but her crazy mother uprooted her whole life and sent her to a convent in Rome. Phil, Astrid’s cousin, bugged me a whole lot, until the last half of the book when she became more tolerable, but I really disliked Astrid’s mother all throughout the book, which I think was probably the point. I really liked Cory. She was probably my favourite character, besides Astrid.

I really liked Astrid and Giovanni’s relationship while I was reading the book. Sure, it wasn’t exactly realistic – girl meets a guy in Rome, they instantly hit it off, both happen to be in Rome for a while, etc. – kind of an ideal like situation, but as the book goes on, their relationship gets really complicated and it makes more sense. Giovanni was an interesting character, but once I finished the book, he wasn’t incredibly memorable.

There were are one or two scenes of animal-ish abuse in this book that kind of made me sad. I fully realize that it never really happened and that unicorns don’t really exist, but it still hurt to read, so skip over those bits if things like that upset you.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Rampant. It took me a little while to get into it because of my whole “…unicorns, really?” attitude, but it was really worth it. It definitely took me on a crazy ride full of action and romance and history and betrayal, and I’m really excited to read the second book, Ascendant, which came out a few weeks ago.

“Better to hunt the mad goat than to let it attack any more of my boyfriends.” – page 28