Review: Storm by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: Storm
Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Series: Elemental #1
Publication: April 24th 2012 by Kensington
Genre: Young Adult ~ Paranormal
Format: Paperback, 353 pages
Cover Rating: 5/5
Content Rating: 5/5
First Line: The self-defense class had been a waste of sixty bucks.

~synopsis~

Becca Chandler is suddenly getting all the guys - all the ones she doesn't want. Ever since her ex-boyfriend spread those lies about her. Then she saves Chris Merrick from a beating in the school parking lot. Chris is different. Way different: he can control water just like his brothers can control fire, wind, and earth. They're powerful. Dangerous. Marked for death.

And now that she knows the truth, so is Becca.

Secrets are hard to keep when your life's at stake. When Hunter, the mysterious new kid around school, turns up with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time, Becca thinks she can trust him. But then Hunter goes head-to-head with Chris, and Becca wonders who's hiding the most dangerous truth of all.

The storm is coming.

My thoughts: 
Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my. Oh my!

Hot guys alert!

Hot guys, brothers, elements, twists and turns on every corner... How could I not love this book? It was fantastic! I knew it would be but damn, Brigid Kemmerer is one amazing writer. She definitely gained a fan with me. I need more!

The first time I saw this cover was probably somewhere on Goodreads and I just knew I had to read this book soon. The four guys on the cover makes it very different from other book covers I've seen lately. Not to mention they are hot! Also the title and synopsis drew me in. I love reading about people who have a thing with the elements. It rocks!

I was pretty much hooked the moment I started reading and before I knew it I was more than a 100 pages in! The book alternated with POV's from Chris and Becca. I loved both. Also character wise I loved both these characters. When we first meet Becca we see her saving Chris Merrick from some guys who were beating him up. Right away I knew something is up with Chris and that he has a thing with water. I loved him also right away. I really liked Becca too. She wasn't a typical YA girl character who waits for people to safe her, even though she actually gets saved a lot in this book but she isn't helpless! She knows how to defend herself. 

I loved the Merrick brothers. All of them! Michael is the oldest, raising his younger brothers since their parents passed away so he has taken up the parenting role. However his younger brothers just want him to be their brother, not their father. I also read Elemental, Michael's story about what happened with Emily and it makes me very sad so I can't help but love Michael and be sad for everything he went through. Michael controls the element Earth, which seems very fitting for him. Then we have the twins, Gabriel and Nick. Gabriel is fire and Nick is air. Gabriel is the more hot headed one. No surprise there since he controls fire. He also has a lot of issues with Michael. Hope they work it out! Nick... I really like him! I don't know what it is about him though. I just know I really like him. And then we have Chris with his element water. I just love him. How he fell for Becca and just the way he is. He loves his family so much even though things have been so hard. 
Now, you would think it was all about the Merrick brothers and Becca. Wrong! There's someone else involved too. New Kid as Becca called him first, but his real name is Hunter. I love that name, by the way. :)   I really liked Hunter too. I even loved him. With his piercings and tattoos and just his whole look was awesome to me. Also I think he really cared for Becca even with everything that happened and the secrets he kept. And he's so cute with his dog!  And yes we have a love triangle there!
The other more characters I kinda wanted to bitch slap all the time. Tyler, Seth and Drew. Assholes. I hope they get what they deserve soon. Especially Drew. I also didn't feel the love for Becca's best friend Quinn. At times I liked her but not mostly. She was kinda meh to me. Oh well... I did love Becca's mother. She seemed just so loving and when Michael showed up in scrapes and what not she took care of him even though she didn't knew him. It was good for Michael too since his mother passed away years ago. It was adorable to see him being fussed over and him letting her. One of the more bigger turns was with Becca's father. I so didn't see that one coming but it was a really good twist! Loved it. There was also a twist with Hunter but I saw that one coming since the start. And with Becca too. About how she's also a *spoiler* fifth!

I really really really loved this world. I loved reading about these elemental powers. How the brother could draw strenght from each element they could control (or does the element control them?!).  I never read anything quite like it before. 
The only slightly and that's a tiny tiny tiny slight thing that bothered me was the repetitive use of the word hassle. I saw it a lot. So I was like maybe Kemmerer could use a different word sometime? Maybe not even worth mentioning but yeah there you go. But really the books was kinda perfect to me!

The romance was oh so sweet! Becca had a hard time trusting both Chris as Hunter because of the rumours her exboyfriend had spread. Trust me, it wasn't nice! But eventually she learned to trust him and then Hunter totally ruined her trust. Anyway... I don't have a favorite between those guys. I love em both. I did love how Chris kissed Becca at the end after he found out she wasn't dating Hunter anymore. So totally cute! 
Storm was a flood of action, 5 hot guys, witty dialogue and sweet romance. A must-read for every person who wants something totally different to read. You'll love it!

~Favorite Quotes~

“Mom!" Becca stared at her. "You think—you think I'm dating Michael?"
Her mom stared back at her, obviously thrown. "You're not?"
This would be hilarious if her mom didn't look so serious.
"Oh my god," cried Becca. "Are you kidding? Michael is the last person I would ever—oh my god. I wouldn't go out with him if someone paid me. Ugh, that's just—"
"You know I can hear you, right?" called Michael.”

“So she doesn’t like the rain,” said Gabriel.
Nick smiled. “I kind of like the irony.”…
Chris sighed. “No one likes the rain.”
“You do,” said Nick. He flung the lighter back to his brother. Gabriel caught it. “Maybe we should put some money on it, see how long it takes Chris to get her wet.”

“If you want me to fix your homework, you need to leave me alone.” Then he spotted her. “You’re back.”
“Yeah.” She glanced between him and Gabriel. “You do his homework?”
“Just the math. It’s a miracle he can count to ten.”
“I can count to one.” Gabriel gave him the finger.”

About the author:

Brigid Kemmerer was born in Omaha, Nebraska, though her parents quickly moved her all over the United States, from the desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, and several stops in between, eventually settling near Annapolis, Maryland. Brigid started writing in high school, and her first real “novel” was about four vampire brothers causing a ruckus in the suburbs. Those four brothers are the same boys living in the pages of The Elemental Series, so Brigid likes to say she’s had four teenage boys taking up space in her head for the last seventeen years. (Though sometimes that just makes her sound nuts.)

Brigid writes anywhere she can find a place to sit down (and she’s embarrassed to say a great many pages of The Elemental Series were written while sitting on the floor in the basement of a hotel while she was attending a writers’ conference). Most writers enjoy peace and quiet while writing, but Brigid prefers pandemonium. A good thing, considering she has three boys in the house, ranging in age from an infant to a teenager.

While writing STORM, it’s ironic to note that Brigid’s personal life was plagued by water problems: her basement flooded three times, her roof leaked, her kitchen faucet broke, causing the cabinet underneath to be destroyed by water, the wall in her son’s room had to be torn down because water had crept into the wall, and her bedroom wall recently developed a minor leak. Considering SPARK, book 2 in the series, is about the brother who controls fire, Brigid is currently making sure all the smoke detectors in her house have batteries.

Brigid loves hearing from people, and she probably won't refer to herself in the third person like this if you actually correspond with her. She has a smartphone surgically attached to her person nearby at all times, and email is the best way to reach her. Her email address is brigidmary@gmail.com.

Visit Brigid at 
http://www.brigidkemmerer.com
Find her also at: Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Facebook