The Storm: The most gripping and chilling psychological suspense novel of 2020, exploring coercive control, lost love, and buried secrets

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I'm trying really hard to write a coherent review, but every time I think of anything from that list above, I start to see red.

I was an only child for much of my life, then, by an unfortunate twist of fate, when I was almost 10 years old, my sister came along. For much of my life after that, the sister and I fought like cats and dogs, mainly because I was a controlling little teenager who viewed my toddler sister as a slave/dog that I could send to fetch whatever I needed. As much as we fought, there was never any sort of conflict on the grand scale of that within this book. Holy crap, this book was filled with massive amounts of adrenaline and testosterone. Ok, so the boys are hot, I don't care. It only works in my sexual fantasies if they actually get along. Maria is a living, breathing creature, same as we are; but she is by nature very destructive and has no conscience about what she does, where she does it, or to whom over the twelve-day course of her life. All the humans can do is observe and get out of her way as much as possible. And of course she is indiscriminate about her targets; various animals have to cope with her, just as all the people do. What? No. I like this book far too much to do that," I said. I mean, really, hun, is that what you think-- okay, fair point.

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So no weather satellites, and no computers. How, then did forecasters forecast (and quite accurately too) these large scale weather patterns? By a network of reporting stations on land and at sea. Ships ranging from fishing vessels to liners were expected to call in once a day with a temperature and air pressure report, the same as did land based weather reporting stations. But data alone is not a weather report. And it takes a master, like the Chief (Meteorologist) to fill in the map with the color-coded information until the extent and movement of the storm is obvious.

It's easy to recognize the good things about this book: the smooth writing; some dialogues are sharp and entertaining; one character, Hunter, is well developed. However, some other aspects of the book turned me off so much that I cannot give the book a rating higher than 2 stars. The book is dated, with some statements reflecting the social norms of the time and all of the advances now in all things mechanical and in weather forecasting that have been made because of computers, but the writing is so solid as to not be effected much. ANYWAY, with so many male characters interacting at one time, it was hard for me to exactly pinpoint who is this 'he' and 'him'. The ages passed; brow and chin moved forward; man walked two-legged upon the earth. Hunter lying in wait, seed-gatherer wandering afield--they came to know vaguely the warnings of wind and cloud. . . .A nice, well-executed novel. I wanted to read this because I've always loved books with natural powers such as earth, water, wind and fire. They fascinate me. Brigid, you have cemented yourself as one of my new favourite authors. I love you. Can I please keep your boys?

I'll begin from Becca, because she is what made this book insufferable for me. Becca has the personality of a kitchen cloth, which is my witty way of saying she has none. Nothing makes her special or stand out from every other girl. Is she exceptionally smart? Hahahhaha, no. Is she stunningly beautiful? Meh. Is she in any other way interesting, maybe cunning or charismatic, strong, brave, daring, anything, just to prove she's a worthy heroine? Nope. I feel like Becca made a few decisions that were illogical, like say, going to a party thrown by a guy who started the rumors about her and who continued to harass her only to get drunk there. Given what her past was with this guy, that made so little sense to me. Also, in the end where she goes outside of the dance to talk with the guy (Drew) alone, was so not smart on so many levels. Why not have Hunter just stand at a distance while she had the convo and be nearby just in case douchey McDouchey Pants tried to try anything. And you can believe that Drew did intend to try something. It was like watching a character in a horror movie opening That Door and you're yelling at your TV, (as if they can hear you) telling them not to, but they don't listen and they die. That is how I felt with Becca. Yes Definatly...this book had everything any YA paranormal reader would adore..Overall it's was a great one time read. Making storms out of nothings is something, but changing the course of life is an entirely different thing, and no-one seemed to be bothered by this. (And the same goes for the next book and there are still no consequences!)I was looking into the history of naming hurricanes, and stumbled on this. The New York Times reviewed it as “phenomenal”, although I think the author was having a bit of pun, since a storm is a meteorological phenomena. Still, it was a very positive review. You can look at the original review from November 20th, 1941, (which was just about two weeks before Pearl Harbor). Here is an even more enthusiastic amateur review. Oddly, the tradition is to name tropical storms and hurricanes, not extratropical storms, such as the one in this book. Good... good. Very good. Nothing eartshaking, but hey, good is already more than I expected, since I haven't touched a het paranormal YA in months. The romance was... cheesy, sweet, angsty (in the girly way, which is not angsty at all) but surprisingly okay, because of the good pacing and slow-building tension. Although I can't help but be suprised by the complete absence of actual smut in here - it's like the main characters' hormones are hybernating for some reason. There's an almost-rape (not with one of the love interests, chill!), so the author might not have wanted to put both elements in the same book, but... no, even that doesn't make sense. Whatever. Too many assholes. I've been trying not to swear as much, but there's no better way to say that. Everybody in this book is a jerk, and I don't just mean the bad guys. This isn't helped by having the chief assholes be the supposed good guys (and no, I do not except Chris, not entirely at any rate). Now with Hunter, the new kid, antagonizing Kris and trying to win her affection, she must discover which one of them has a hold in her heart and which one isn't telling the whole truth....

Again, plotwise, the initial chapters are dedicated to one after another testosterone-fueled brawls between the guys and I thought Without Fidelis, I simply wouldn’t have had the patience or know-how. I felt like a detective trawling through huge books of public records in Nice, but it was two years before we finally came across Navratil’s name. When I saw it in the census, I shouted out ‘Bingo!’ in the library. Becca know nothing of this "world" and one night when she sees 2 guys beating up Chris, she goes for it and saves him. And that just made her into the hit list, alongside Chris and his brothers. Sister Mary Rose was plump and youngish; she taught the class and was obviously trying to be progressive. Sister Mary Dolores was thin and oldish; she apparently came along to chaperone Sister Mary Rose, and her attitude seemed to be that if God had wanted us to know about the weather he would have informed St. Thomas Aquinas. Huh? I totally forgot about Hunter. He is cool, I guess but generally I just don't like blond guys? (Maybe I deserve to be stoned to death for my discrimination but I can't help it!). Believe it or not, he was the one guy who almost managed to get my ovaries to explode. I almost wanted to shove Becca away from Hunter's embrace and whisper "Take me instead, Hunter! I'd wear all those crazy bracelets you have in your possession though I'm not a hippie". Note that I have nothing against hippies.While interesting as a subject for a novel, the concept of a storm's formation and evolution as the main character focus does get a little tedious and repetitive simply because there isn't much for it to do. Stewart refracts the storm's progress outward by including a patchwork of humans and situations in the path of the storm, which largely play out pretty predictably. There are a lot of meteorologists, road workers and power linemen. They go through their usual motions and any potential drama is diluted by the humdrum everydayness of their reactions. BUY or BORROW?: Hahahahahaha you're funny. Why would you even think to borrow this? Buy all the way!! :') I had my eyes on this book for a while because most of my friends have read it and loved it, so when I got a copy of Spark (the second book in the series) for review I thought that it was time for me to start reading this series too. The world, once explained (that'll be next), makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, powerful elementals are under an automatic death sentence because they're "too powerful to trust"—said sentence to be carried out by a trained elite cadre of even more powerful elementals? Who thought that made sense? This book is the story of a tropical storm hitting California. It is a novel about the storm. Stewart uses a big cast of characters, from the meteorological service to the railroads to the irrigation and dam experts to the road maintenance forces to the electrical company to the phone company to a young couple going on a road trip. All of the stories weave together to tell the story of the storm.