I sat down at my computer this morning and tried to think of something interesting to say about my reading experience of The Summoning. It seems though, that all of my creative faculties have been sucked away since I spent eighty percent of this book imagining what the story COULD have been.

The story is like the little engine that could. It has the potential, it's chugging away, it's working hard. Only as it turns out it's The Little Engine That Could Have Been Something interesting.

The first part of The Summoning was great. It was creepy with freaky ghosts and our protagonist Chloe Saunders being put in a Group Home for disturbed children. That's the first eighty or so pages and then the story abruptly stops there. The ghosts, the spooky atmosphere and all that doesn't show up very much from then on. There's a few instances but they're no longer scary and frankly the focus of the story is on the Group Home from then on, which I found really frustrating and annoying.

There's even these tantalizing hints that there's a supernatural community out there somewhere that Chloe could escape to. Yet do we get to see it? No. I doubt there could have been a more effective way of annoying me. This book was the biggest tease. Everything it seemed to promise was just smoke and mirrors behind what it really provided. What it really provided wasn't at all great.

Chloe is not a great character. Armstrong seems unable to decide what kind of person Chloe is. Most of the time she is docile and a bit of a push over. She's a self prescribed rich brat. She never puts up a fight with anyone - oh of course EXCEPT for the people who could help her. That's right. The big intimidating guy with a violent history is the perfect person to practice your bravado on. I know she's only supposed to be fourteen but she's just a non event. There's nothing interesting about her. She spends most of the story just annoying me with her patheticness.

The other characters are just boring. I had no interest in any of them. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen - someone interesting to come along but they never did. It was agonizingly painful and disappointing!

Warning Spoilers below:

What the hell? I have never been so disappointed in the ending of a book my life! She has this great escape from the Group Home that we've been forced to suffer through for pretty much the entire book, only to end up in yet another asylum? I have no interest in reading on. I've already read Armstrong's Stolen and the asylum in that was boring enough. Not interested in going through it again!

And the "big reveal" at the end? Okay, sit around kiddies, it's time for a plot lesson from Mrs. Kennedy. Gather in close, okay? For all of you writing a story or novel, do not, and I repeat, do not make the "big reveal" at the end of your story so painfully obvious from a quarter in, okay?

The Group Home is evil? Dang, I didn't figure that out two hundred pages ago! Stop, I never saw THAT coming! *Rolls eyes* Oh no! Who are we to believe in now that it turns out that the Group Home is evil? The very foundation of our world has been turned upside down! (Okay, I just woke up so my sarcasm o'meter is on full throttle right now.)

Aunt Lauren made absolutely no freakin' sense, by the way. I feel like it was flung in there at the last moment as a shock and awe tactic. It wasn't shocking, it wasn't awing... it was just stupid.

So, over all, I was quite underwhelmed with this book and I have absolutely no intention of reading the others. I'll stick with Armstrong's adult fiction from now on like Tatiana told me I should.