Oppression (Children of the Gods #1) | Jessica Therrien | Review

By Vera Carregueira - 15:30



Release Date: 09/02/15
346 pages



Elyse knows what it means to keep a secret. She's been keeping secrets her whole life. Two, actually. First, that she ages five times slower than average people, so that while she looks eighteen years old, she's well over eighty. Second, that her blood has a mysterious power to heal.

For Elyse, these things don't make her special. They make life dangerous. After the death of her parents, she's been careful to keep her secret as closely guarded as possible. Now, only one other person in the world knows about her age and ability. Or so she thinks. Elyse is not the only one keeping secrets. There are others like her all over the world, descendants of the very people the Greeks considered gods. She is one of them, and they have been waiting for her for a long time.

Some are waiting for her to put an end to centuries of traditions that have oppressed their people under the guise of safeguarding them. Others are determined to keep her from doing just that. But for Elyse, the game is just beginning-and she's not entirely willing to play by their rules.



This book was a good surprise, I've never read this author and I have my share of YA paranormal romance so I was really excited to start reading Oppression asap. It started really well, so appealing that I was stuck to my ereader for a while. The slow introduction of the characters make it easier to remember them later because the author present them in specific events of Elyse's life. 

I really enjoyed that Elyse didn't trust blindly in William in the begining, the fact that she questions a lot about why she would trust in someone she doesn't know makes her a more realistic character, although at some point their relationship develops so fast that part of that credibility breaks.

The presence of Descedants in our world is completely natural and almost undetected, there is no explanation it's who they are, how they are, it is simply the way it is however there are so many different habilities that makes the story a little confuse.

The fact that they age slowly was the part that had most flaw. On one hand we can, up to a certain point, see Elyse with the face and body of a 10 years old but with the actua 50 years reading Shakespeare. On the other hand, with almost 90 actual years and with the appearance of a 18, the characters act like teenagers, they go to school and they lack a certain depth which should come with their actual years. They are still learning about their powers and their race. There is something here that isn't really quite right.

Elyse wasn't really convicing me as a character, at the beginning. She seemed too fragil to someone who is used to run and I don't believe that the mourning period justified not being used to take public transports or feeling at ease with the surrounding world.

I was expecting a little bit more action when I was reading it, but I thought that the book was more of a starting point to get to know the characters and the plot, their powers and the way everything will connect in the next book.

The ending was a surprise even though I was, again expecting some more fight and action to take place, I believe it had an interesting ending, allowing the reader to have a little bit of curiosity to grab the next book of this series.



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About the Author
Jessica Therrien is the author of the young adult paranormal fiction series Children of the Gods. Book one in the series, Oppression, became a Barnes & Noble best-seller shortly after its release in February of 2012.


Aside from her Children of the Gods series, Jessica’s work can also be found in a published collection of flash fiction stories called Campaigner Challenges 2011Out of over 350 submissions her story, The Soulless, won first place for people’s choice and fourth place in the judging round of Rachael Harrie’s Writing Campaign Challenge. Her story, Savedis also available as part of the anthology.

Jessica spent most of her life in the small town of Chilcoot, California, high up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In this town of nearly 100 residents, with no street lights or grocery stores, there was little to do but find ways to be creative. Her mother, the local English teacher, inspired her to do all things artistic, and ultimately instilled in her a love for language.


In 2003, Jessica attended California State University Long Beach where her passion for language found her studying Chinese, and in 2005 she moved to Taiwan to study abroad. From 2005 to 2006 Jessica was fully immersed in the Chinese language as she attended National Taiwan University, and in 2008 she graduated from San Diego State University magna cum laude.

Jessica currently lives in Irvine with her husband and two sons. She is planning a re-release of her series through Acorn Publishing in September of 2015. The re-release will include the third and final book in her Children of the Gods series as well as a bonus chapter in the back of Oppression.


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