Author: Helen Hiorns
Publisher: RHCP Digital
Released: July 15th 2013
Pages: 185 (eBook)
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US
Add on Goodreads
It's the first thing they teach you when you start school. But they don't need to; your parents tell you when you're first learning how to say your name. It's drummed into you whilst you're taking your first stumbling steps. It's your lullaby. From the moment it first appears, you don't tell anyone the name on your wrist.
In Corin's world, your carpinomen - the name of your soul mate, marked indelibly on your wrist from the age of two or three - is everything. It's your most preciously guarded secret; a piece of knowledge that can give another person ultimate power over you. People spend years, even decades, searching for the one they're supposed to be with.
But what if you never find that person? Or you do, but you just don't love them? What if you fall for someone else - someone other than the name on your wrist?
And what if - like Corin - the last thing in the world you want is to be found?
I can't decide on a rating. I can't decide on a rating and I hate it when that happens! The Name on Your Wrist's synopsis piqued my interest, and whilst on one hand I want to sing its praises, on the other I just can't get over the fact that nothing happened.
In a future England, the fate of your future partner is determined by your carpinomen - the name on your wrist that appears when you are a few years old. People spend years searching for their match, but Corin wants none of it. Corin wants to be able to make her own decisions and love who she wants to love. But maybe there is more to her society than she first thought?
Corin was a marmite character. On one hand she had a funny element to her that made her narrative interesting to read, but on the other, she was such a bloody smartass that I wanted to slap her. She was, overall, infuriating, maybe to the point of being unrealistic. Are human being honestly capable of being that self-centred? Whilst I think Hiorns meant for her to appear funny, it honestly just grew annoying.
I also didn't feel like the reader got a true sense of her relationship with Colton, nor the supposed chemistry there. It fell a bit flat to me, and just came across as though she was using him. Really, there was more chemistry before they were together than when they were.
The mysteries were also quite anticlimactic. Finding out Corin's soul mate, finding out about her sister, the ending...I saw the majority of it coming. Actually, I even thought that we as the reader already knew the ending, it seemed so obvious and so unnecessary.
I've spent most of this review complaining, when really it wasn't as bad as all that. For the most part, I enjoyed it. Hiorns has a good writing style that keeps you engrossed despite the lack of plot. The idea of this dystopian England is also incredibly unique - dystopian, despite being my favourite genre, is so overdone and now the same ideas are just being churned over and over. It was nice to see that there is still room for uniqueness about it.
Overall, I'm going to give this an average rating of three stars. It could have been improved, sure, but for the most part it was quite an addictive read.
Rating: 3/5
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