Empath vs. Parched

In the last couple of days, I read 2 books and I honestly didn’t realize that either one of them was going to be a vampire story.  See, a while back I bought about 6 books at once that were all on sale on Amazon (FREE—one of my favorite things… cue Sound of Music song…), and by the time I got around to reading them, I really couldn’t remember what each one was about.  I did remember a little about each of them, just not the vampire part.

So now that I ended up reading them back to back I really want to compare and contrast them to answer the question:  Why do I want to read the sequel to one and could care less about the other?

COMPARE:

Both start out with a heroine who can feel what the people around her are feeling (Clarity can also hear people’s thoughts, but close enough)

Both heroines are isolated by their “ability” and have lived very lonely lives out of necessity (hard to make friends when you know- and have to share- every mean feeling the person you're talking to has).

Both have names that sound similar: Claire and Clarity (small detail but still a similarity that stood out to me)

They have both lived under the thumb of mommy and daddy their whole lives, despite feeling separate from everyone else.

Both meet vampires and fall in love (typical vampire story, as already noted)

And, lastly, both heroines are completely naïve (despite being able to read minds) and don’t make connections very quickly.

CONTRAST:

The main characters vary quite a bit in age (Claire is 18, Clarity is 29)

I really liked Claire and James from Empath.  Their love story made sense in the fact that their emotions followed nicely.  Sure there were a few times that Claire flew off the handle for something minor, but real people do that when they are insecure.

The Parched characters are not at all believable in their emotions… in fact, I kept having flashbacks to Awakening when the people would be having a very serious conversation only to drop it and start laughing hysterically for seemingly no reason.  (If you happen to remember my review of Awakening you know this is a total buzz kill for me.)

The plot of Empath makes sense.  You can follow what is happening and why… it may be weird, but you can follow it.  And it is a good story.

Parched is just not well written… there are sentences in here that sound like a 10-year-old wrote them.  It may honestly be one of the most imaginative books I’ve ever read, but it was like reading something from the imagination of a child or maybe a written down dream—not very well thought out and without connection.

So all that is to say that I’m interested to see what happens next for Claire and James and will read Bonded soon, but no amount of imagination can make the characters of Parched worth following.