Dark Eyes by William Richter

Dark Eyes by William Richter was one of those books that sits in the bargain section of a book store, and looks at you until you feel guilty for leaving it there, and ultimately buy it. Plus, having a quote in the corner from Patticus Lore calling the main character the Lisbeth Salander of YA novels makes it rather intriguing.

Dark Eyes follows a girl name Wally who was adopted into an American family from Russia. She moved out of her home and lives on the street with some friends, and together they all manage to survive. When one of her old crew members is found murdered with Wally's fake ID, Wally knows that she has to get a new one, so she sets out to get one. 

What she doesn't expect is to find a note from her mother, her biological mother. The note sends her into a frenzy, and soon she is dedicating herself to finding out if her mother is still alive, and if so, where she is. That is about as far into the plot as I can go without giving you far too many spoilers. There are some pretty crazy twists and turns in this book, however I still feel as if nothing really happens throughout it (even though it is pretty action packed.) What I mean by nothing happening is that Wally seems to be basically in the same place that she was at the end of the book as she was in the beginning.

Wally being called the Lisbeth Salander of YA is also very misleading. While Wally is clever and manages to get away with some pretty crazy stuff in the course of the novel, she is no where near as badass as Lisbeth. I found Wally to be rather annoying at times, mostly because of the way she speaks.

The general writing of this novel is difficult to get used to because of a lot of the terms which are used, and the type of language which it is filled with. This gets even more difficult to get used to as the characters speak. Since they all live on the street and presumably don't have more than a grade 9 education, their speech is filled with slang and street terms. Of course my problem with this could stem from the fact that I am an English student, and grammar matters to me.

Over all, I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary about this novel, and nothing about it was. It was entertaining and usually fast paced with a couple of twists to keep you on your toes, but the story itself was lacking a lot of things that I believe could have made it that much better. 

STAR RATING: ★★★