Review: Imposter by Susanne Winnacker

Imposter by Susanne Winnacker
Publisher: Razorbill
Release date: May 28th, 2013
Purchase: Amazon / Barnes and Noble

Can Tessa pose as Madison . . . and stop a killer before it’s too late? 

Tessa is a Variant, able to absorb the DNA of anyone she touches and mimic their appearance. Shunned by her family, she’s spent the last two years training with the Forces with Extraordinary Abilities, a secret branch of the FBI. When a serial killer rocks a small town in Oregon, Tessa is given a mission: she must impersonate Madison, a local teen, to find the killer before he strikes again.

Tessa hates everything about being an impostor—the stress, the danger, the deceit—but loves playing the role of a normal girl. As Madison, she finds friends, romance, and the kind of loving family she’d do anything to keep. Amid action, suspense, and a ticking clock, this super-human comes to a very human conclusion: even a girl who can look like anyone struggles the most with being herself.

My Thoughts:
This wasn't exactly what I was expecting and I am so angry with what I am left with.  The first thing I am angry over is that even though I really didn't care for this book I know I am still going to read the sequel GAH!  Seriously I can 't even explain it but I am because the writing pulled me in and even with the lack of love for this book I am just too dame curious and I have to see what happens!  Don't you just hate when that happens??!!

My second anger point is the characters.  I have read many many books and I have never been so irritated with a bunch of characters before!  Tessa makes some really stupid decisions and so does Alec.  I swear I wanted to throw this book across the room a dozen times and the first time was only about 30 pages in.  Luckily my hope was answered with that one and Tessa was caught, but she needed way more reprimanding in my opinion.  You just don't do what she did!  Also the whole push and pull between Tessa and Alec got to be too much.  I know there was a reason why he was with Kate and I really wanted to know what that reason was. I hoped that by the end we would learn more but unfortunately we get nothing.  I am left thinking that Alec and Kate really were a couple and that he was just a jerk for what he did throughout the book.  The one reason we are given about his restraint was not good enough.  He says that Tessa was too young and that was never an issue between them, I could see if he was 22 and she was 16 but she was 16 and he was 18.  I have seen way bigger age differences and it never became an issue.  I think we the readers should have been given the main reason not a cop out.

Okay moving on my next big gripe, the whole showdown at the end.  I won't go into details since I don't want to give too much away, but when the time came for a certain someone to use their variation it wasn't there.  The whole book is about variations and how bad arse they are and yes we are told from the beginning that they can be finicky but I expected after so much training this certain someone would have had a grip on theirs.  The fact that they had to use certain emotions to call upon their variation bothered me too.  I think this gives that other person too much importance and I just didn't care for it.

My other gripes are smaller, but no less important.   For instance, the identity of killer wasn't really kept secret.  It felt like the author laid too much out on the table and I would have liked for the killer to have been more of a surprise.  Also I can smell a love triangle and I don' t like it!  After all the pinning and wanting that Tessa did I hoped that if her and Alec ever got together it would stick, but a certain other someone looks to be in the picture and I am not looking forward to seeing how all that unravels.

So you see I wasn't a fan of this book, but I will read the sequel.  Imposter ended in such a way that will make every single one of its readers want to read the sequel. I have to know more about Abel and I have to know more about Devon!  Ms.Winnacker knows how to keep her readers wanting more!  My rating is for the story and ending alone.  I really enjoyed the actual world that was created and well that ending deserves a snowflake even though I really wish a particular scene would have taken place a somewhere a little more intimate.

2.5 snowflakes