An invisible girl is the perfect weapon.
The main reason I wanted to read Transparent was because it is advertised as "The God Father meets X-men", right away I knew I had too have it. I'm a HUGE X-Men fan and thought maybe it would even be a sister book to Shatter Me... I think this advertisement is a little off.
Transparent follows the story of a girl named Fiona who was born invisible. She, is like many others in the world, were born with powers. This is my first problem with this book. It's never explained how people mutated too get this powers... was it evolution, radiation, something else??? We might never know. Fiona's father is the head of a Mob that sells a drug that is made to enhance your powers. And of course like any crime boss he uses both Fiona's powers and the rest of his family to his advantage. He has Fiona doing everything from spying on his competitors to doing simple pick pocketing. So when the story started out with her sneaking in to listen to a conversation and then going all mission impossible on people I was pretty excited to keep reading... But that experience was short lived.
Fiona and her mother run away to escape the life of crime and to start over again. They move too a small town where her fathers competitor actually lives. I figured that as the story went on Whipple would have it so that Fiona's back story was revealed here and there. It sadly never really happens. She mentions she's done a lot of bad things, but I wanted more of what she had done in the past. The story continues as Fiona and her mother hang out in this town. Her mom slightly works she slightlly goes to school. While at school she is picked on of course for being invisible (lets be real kids would think this was so bad-ass). She becomes friends with other outcast: Seth, Brady, and Bea. All who also have powers of their own. As far as Fiona's personality goes, it is terrible. She was SO annoying. And for a girl whose never seen what she looks like she is so full of herself. She's constantly saying she knows she has a good figure and that she knows she has nice cleavage, etc.... She also brings nothing else to the table. She has no personality, very little intelligence, and can't even offer us a sense of humor.
This brings me to my next issues, the sub characters. Brady is suppose to be a super hottie, but to me doesn't sound hot at all. He does seem sweet but that's it, her bff Bea is LAME! Then there's Seth. Seth the convenient character love interest. It is clear from the get go what Seth's purpose will be... And you might think I'm about to drop a spoiler on you but I'm not, it's obvious the second he is introduced that his power will be able to see her. TRUST ME IT WAS FAR TOO CONVENIENT!!! At first I thought maybe it would be like Adam in Shatter Me and that we would think he was just so convenient then he'd turned out to be something completely else. When it's "revealed" I rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell out my head. The worst part however is when she finds out he can see her she ask him what he looks like and he tells her AND SHE COMPLAINS ABOUT IT!!! The boy gives her sweet compliments and just like the average super B would do she turns them all to negatives!! This is both a real life pet peeve of mine and a book one as well. JUST TAKE THE COMPLIMENT!!! LIKE SERIOUSLY!!!!!??? WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!
(Pretty much how my face actually looked too.) I think that Fiona's over all attitude was just really what turned me off too this story. I would love to go into details about her brothers, because they are a "big part" of the story but I felt they were pointless. Hated them as much as the rest of the family. I would also love to talk about the plot, but I don't feel like there was much of one. The discription of this story had me thinking that this would be a non stop action packed book but nothing happens the entire time. I was never once WOW or shocked by anything that happened.
The concept of Transparent is amazing, original, and a book I was really looking forward too. Sadly it just didn't live up to the hype I built for it in my head. I wish this was a case of "it's not you it's me" but sadly I don't think it was.
3/10 Stars
-Angela
