Storm by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: Storm
Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Publisher: Kensington
Publication: April 24, 2012
Genre: YA Paranormal
Source: Easons

Secrets are hard to keep when your life's at stake.

Becca Chandler is suddenly getting all the guys; all the ones she doesn't want. When she saves Chris Merrick from a beating in the school parking lot, everything is about to change. Chris is different from the guys at school... really different. He can control water just like his brothers can control fire, wind, and earth. The brothers are powerful and dangerous. And now that Becca knows the truth, so is she.

When the mysterious new kid, Hunter, turns up, Becca thinks she can trust him. But when he goes head-to-head with Chris, Becca's left wondering who's hiding the most dangerous truth of all.

For a book, chock-full of YA cliches, it was actually a pretty good read!

'Storm' by Brigid Kemmerer. A fast-paced story about Becca, who, after saving Chris from having his ass handed to him by two older guys, discovers that her previously thought to be normal world isn't so normal after all. It's your typical paranormal story, reminding you over and over again of how a lot YA books tend to fit into the same mold, yet it brings quite a few original and interesting ideas to the table at the same time. 

Okay first of all, we'll settle this YA cliche thing shall we? Girl falls in love with a secret paranormal guy. Girl learns of guy's strange world but accepts that she's part of it now. Girl is in danger because she knows too much. Love triangle happens for a little bit. Drama. Drama. Then climax.
The sarcasm is a surprise to both you and me, because aside from the cookie-cutter story developments you can see in a lot of YA books nowadays, this book was actually pretty impressive! In fact, with the cliches out of mind, this book was a pretty good start to an interesting and unique series.

Kemmerer's take on element-manipulation was incredibly refreshing. I went into it expecting strong similarities to our friends over at The Legend of Aang, but really, the similarities ended with the basic idea. I loved the history we were given, even thinking the book could have done with more of that aspect, done with more of a setting up-feel which kinda lacked here.
The plot was really quite fast-paced, what with fight scenes in every other chapter. I did think, however, that Kemmerer's writing faltered at those points, because the action, for the most part, felt really choppy and unclear. There were parts of the story that I felt, weren't at all necessary, and actually brought the book down in my opinion, but they might be considered spoilers to some people, so I'll just leave it at that.

I both liked and disliked the characters. While the plot was quite cliched at times, the characters were surprisingly original and felt real, which isn't something you come across all too much nowadays. The book didn't have a huge amount of character development, but what it did have was evenly spread out, between the three main characters and the few secondary characters. 

So those are my thoughts.
I would recommend if you're willing to ignore the cliches and focus on the many original sides of the story.