Release & Review - Supremacy by Christin Lee

Title: Supremacy
(Supremacy Series #1)
Author: Christin Lee

Publication Date: June 3rd, 2016

Kate Parker, is a 17 year old senior living in Texas. She's on the swim team, has two incredible best friends, and a passion for saving animals. She falls hard when she meets a mysterious and fascinating guy named Lucas. He has a sexy accent and a killer smile. However, she sees unexplained pain and anger in his dark brown eyes. He claims he’s a foreign exchange student from Spain who is attending the local University—Kate knows there’s more to his story than that. She works hard to discover who he is—what he is.

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3 “Mysterious society” Stars

I finished this book a while ago, and I'm still not sure how to rate it. The first half was more like a 3.5, but the second half was probably a 2.5, so that's why I'm going with 3 stars.

Honestly, I felt like I was reading two different books.

When it started, we met Kate Parker, a super smart teenager with a passion for animals who was trying to rescue a stray dog. Of course she had me falling in love with her right there and then, because how could I not love someone who loves animals? Not possible.

Kate then meets a cute, Spanish exchange student named Lucas. His bike broke down and he's standing on the side of the road when Kate sees him. Since she's good at everything, Kate fixes his bike, impressing him and me. A girl who loves animals and can fix bikes? Yep. I'm in. So in that I even ignored the fact that she was a tiny bit arrogant about her endless abilities.

Kate and Lucas start seeing each other more often, but there's something mysterious about him, and Kate being Kate will try to find out what's up with him no matter what.

Since this was third POV, we also got to know a little more about Lucas away from Kate. Not that he did much other than think about Kate. He was impressed and intrigued with her. Lucas thinks he should stay away because of reasons (that's when the paranormal side of the story starts showing its claw), but he can't resist the attraction he feels for the smart, animal-loving girl. The only problem is Lucas has a tough time controlling his anger -- and it looks like he has A LOT of anger.

This first part of the story really got me. I was curious to see what the supernatural element really was, since the blurb didn't give much away, and I wanted to see Lucas and Kate falling in love.

Brooding, troubled and twisted love interests have always been my kind of thing, so I didn't initially mind Lucas' anger issues because he tried to be on his best behavior around Kate, and since we were inside his head a few times, I could tell the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her or anyone she cared about.

But as the story progressed, his anger outbursts became more frequent and that's when I went.: Nuh-uh, let's stop right here and think this through.

Lucas' anger issues coincided with the part of the story that revealed its supernatural element - and that's when the review gets spoilery, so.... time for:

Lucas is part of a secret underground society. When I say underground, I mean it. These people have been living under our feet for a long time, and they're organized in a system that reminds me a little of Veronica Roth's Divergent: warriors (trained from birth to protect or defeat their targets), ambassadors (future leaders), thinkers (the name is self explanatory), scientists (responsible for keeping the society functioning - building, producing food, etc.).

Lucas is a warrior and he's sent to our world on a mission that we later find out involves Kate and her special ability - the fact that she has perfect memory, a little bit like Elena from Elizabeth Brigg's Future Shock (review here).

But of course he falls for the girl, which makes him want to protect her for his own reasons. Which also makes him more violent.

The problem with Lucas (and every other warrior) is that they're trained not to feel. They're taken from their homes and their parents when they're just kids and all they do from that moment on is focus on mastering their fighting skills and anything else they can use in combat. Lucas is the youngest warrior in history to become a master - to learn everything he needs to know about killing and protecting. So, yeah, it makes sense that he's all anger. These people broke the poor guy. Turned him into a machine instead of a human.

So, yeah, I felt sorry for Lucas. A lot. Which is also why I didn't just throw the book halfway across the room when he started to act scarrier than stalker-Edward (don't insult me, because I do like Twilight -- more than I should, probably). While Lucas never intentionally hurt Kate, she got caught in his anger outbursts more than once.

Kate being Kate (again) tried to fix him. She refused to let him go, even when he was throwing punches around, breaking things, hitting the wall, etc etc... I don't know about you, but 9 out of 10 girls I know would've just ditched him and called the police.

While I can understand where she was coming from (I also had a hard time ignoring the fact that this was a person who had been brainwashed and turned into a killing machine, and maybe human contact could save him), what pissed me off the most was how Kate behaved when he was already angry and trying to control it. If you see someone losing their shit, would you start yelling back and pushing until they exploded? If you're a sane person, then the answer is a big NO. Even if you aren't that sane, but you're smart, the answer will still be NO. And Kate is supposed to be the smartest girl around, so why did she think it was a good idea to push Lucas when he was already hovering over the edge?

There were other situations that had me questioning Kate's intelligence. Like when she thought it was a good idea to go underground alone because... who knows why? When Lucas took her there the first time, he introduced her to a select group of people -- people he thought he could trust. All of those people told her she wasn't safe there unsupervised because people from the "normal world" aren't welcome underground. So, why, why did she risk her life? Not smart, girl. Just... really not smart.

As you can see, my love for animal-loving, bike-fixing, super smart Kate wasn't that strong anymore at that point.

She did redeem herself in the very end. Better late than never. I won't say why, but read it and you'll figure it out.

Overall, I was intrigued with this new world the writer created and I liked all the mixed emotions Lucas brought out in me. It was hard to hate a guy for being violent when he was brainwashed and taugh that violence was the only answer. What can I say? I love grey characters. And it wasn't like Lucas didn't realize he was dangerous. He could've tried to protect Kate better by staying away from her, but those two were already proclaiming their eternal love (way too soon, if you ask me), so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

What I didn't like was the POV. Not because it was third, but because it's easier to shift POVs when you shouldn't when writing in third person. And that happened a lot. I often had to stop and go back because I was sure I was reading Kate's POV, but ended up getting thoughts that belonged to Lucas thrown in the mix. POV violation really takes me out of the story.

So, there were good and bad things about this debut, but it had an interesting enough concept to keep me entertained. I believe it has a lot of elements that will please YA paranormal lovers, and I wouldn't say no to reading the sequel. I'm still curious to see what will happen with Kate and Lucas.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.