2.5 StarsWhispers in Autumn is a book that has me stumped. I can't decide exactly what I think of it. There are aspects that I really enjoyed and things that drove me nuts. Let me see if I can break it down.Althea is different. While everyone around her is content with the alien control that has taken over the world, she is not. She feels, she cares, she hurts. She also travels, unwillingly and with no notice, from place to place based on the season. She has never experienced a summer, it has always eluded her. She is in the possession of a secret note that tells her she is not the same as the other humans and that, in time, she will find others like her.Lucas enters her life in a dark and lonely time and he too is different. As Althea and Lucas find each other, so do the Others who have been searching for them their entire lives. What I liked:Whispers in Autumn starts off with such a somber tone. The first several chapters have this entire melancholic feel as Althea has to hide the fact that she feels and thinks and questions. It is not often that you find a book where everyone is so bland and timid, I enjoyed the style.The concept is great. I am quickly becoming a fan of YA/Science Fiction. Leigh delivers a great twist on alien invasion adding a nice sprinkle of elemental magic and dystopian government control. The combination was interesting.The simple brutality of a life without pure feelings was intriguing and harsh. People get hurt and nobody cares. People die and nobody cares. Althea, herself, has to act like she doesn't care.Althea and Lucas were very real characters. They are flawed and they stumble through their existence and their feeling for each other. After so much time hiding feelings, they are like newborns just trying to figure things out. At first it was annoying, how childish they could be, but then it hit me...of course they would be. They have spent a lifetime pretending, they don't really know how to act and behave as honest human beings.What I didn't like:The first few chapters were quite confusing for me. I felt as though I was thrown into the middle of the story and had to wait for it to catch up with itself. There was a lot happening with no real explanation and it took me longer than I would have liked to get a real feel for what was happening.On top of that there were times where I just did not fully understand what was happening or had happened. There were some holes that had me scratching my head.There is this strange 'thing' that has become quite popular in YA/Dystopia/SciFi of late. It is the capitalization of random words. Okay, maybe not really random but not always with real purpose either. This one has a lot of capitalization. It was too much for this reader. Obviously some people get it and like it...I just don't understand its design.So you decide, did I really like it or really not? I'm still planted firmly on the fence.
