The White Aura by Felicia Tatum

TL;DR soul mates and plot holes

(finished 10/19/15)

free through Bookbub

I read the first part of The White Aura over a period time since I had it on my iPod and really only touched it while trying to wind down for bed, so I don't feel like I can comment too well on that.

At some point, though, I sat down and marathoned The White Aura so I could be done with it, so I will be talking very heavily about that part. 

My notes mention that I was okay up until about 1/5 in, where it suddenly turned melodramatic and trope-ish. (From what I remember, the second chapter was entirely cliche, but I think I forgave it at that point.) 

The narration was basic. There were a lot of the same sentence structures, what's-her-face and Scott's narrations sounded almost identical, and a terrible balance of what needed to be said vs. what was actually said. The only real difference in the narrations was Scott being overly possessive of a girl that didn't even know him yet and sounding way too much like a bad fanfiction version of Edward. And what's-her-face regaled way too much detail about her morning routine and what she decided to wear and spent a significantly less amount during pretty important plot moments. 

(I have forgotten the female main character's name. I think it's Olivia. I wrote the first half of this review pretty close to finishing the book and I still couldn't remember it. That's not promising.) 

And honestly, what's-her-face and Scott came off as very Twilight-trope. It's been a long time since I've actually read the books, so I know my memory of them has been distorted by time and the media, but Scott was extremely reminiscent of creep-Edward. Especially with the whole thing that he was meeting what's-her-face in her dreams for over a year before they moved past the whole makeout session thing and actually talked. Like, you know, don't you want to actually converse with your "heartmate", and not just stick your tongue down her throat and your hands up her shirt? No? Apparently not.

The plot didn't feel consistent to me. There were also some flaws of reasoning that I don't know if they weren't thought out completely or if they were just swept under the rug for the sake of the plot. Like, this curse is supposed to go into effect when they meet, but haven't they still been meeting each other in dreams this whole time? That in itself should negate the purpose of this entire book. What's-her-face is already doomed. People and their heartmates are supposed to be super-intwined with each other and yet there's no indication whatsoever of Anna's heartmate. Scott's so inflicted by being apart from what's-her-face and yet Anna goes the entire book without even just a passing mention of who she's married to? That doesn't seem right. 

The whole "problem" of the story felt kind of insignificant to me. The reasoning behind the curse was never explained (or if it was, it wasn't strong enough to make me remember it) and the villain made no sense. He was definitely one of those "evil to be a plot device" character. He didn't have any goals of his own other than to apparently kill Scott and what's-her-face. 

Also, at the climax the characters manage to forget the initial problem in its entirety until the last paragraph. It creates an unnecessary cliff hanger and brings the book to a crossroads: either The White Aura was entirely for nothing, or the entire problem is going to be written around and given a plot shield so that both the characters survive. That in itself killed any small desire I had to continue reading. (Considering it's at least a trilogy, I'm 99% sure the problem is just written around.)

Juniper, Scott's sister, and Anna all felt like means to an end, too. They didn't have goals of their own. They only existed to support Scott and what's-her-face. Juniper got the complete "best friend syndrome" treatment: [highlight for spoiler] she got killed for just about no reason other than emotional shock factor and then is brought back to life through ~witchcraft~, which completely negates the negligent effect her death had in the first place. I liked Scott's sister to an extent but she felt very trope-ish and kind of overpowered. 

The biggest positive I can come up with is that there were almost no grammatical errors. That was definitely a plus. There were a few minor problems with "dialogue" tag / action "dialogue" lines, but they were easy enough to forgive. 

TL;DR it had a good idea but I wasn't sold on the characters or the execution at all. If I ever encounter a re-write, I'd probably read it, but I doubt there's going to be one based on the subsequent books being established / most likely published (I don't remember if they were).

In my research into The White Aura, I found Hardly's review on Goodreads, which I feel is much more succinct than I am and covers the part of the book I didn't talk about because I forgot a lot of the details about it.