Review: Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson

Title: Walk on Earth a Stranger

Author: Rae Carson

Series: Gold Seer Trilogy #1

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Publication Date: September 22, 2015

Source: Giveaway

Imagine you live during the great California gold rush.  Now imagine that you had the ability to be able to find gold without even trying, as if by magic.

That would make life much easier back then, don't you think?

Well, you would be wrong.

Leah is just that girl.  She is a teen aged girl with the magical gift of being able to locate gold.  She doesn't have to try, she gets a tickle in the back of her throat when she gets near some and the feeling gets stronger and stronger the closer she gets to the piece of gold that is calling to her.  She doesn't have to guess where the gold is, she knows.

Of course, Leah has to keep this a secret.  People would love to be able to have her special gift.  It is the great gold rush after all.  It would make it a lot easier to strike it rich with a power like Leah's.

The only people that know her secret are her parents.  And like good parents, they don't exploit their daughters special talent and they tell her to keep it a secret from everyone, even her best friend in the whole world Jeff.

Then one day, she comes home from school to find her parents murdered and her life has changed entirely.  All of a sudden she finds that she has an uncle that has big plans for her (and her gift) and her best friend is heading off to California for gold with or without her.

So she does what any other girl who can find gold magically and is about to be exploited would do, she disguise herself as a boy and heads off West after her best friend and in search of gold.

So, to sum my feelings up about this book in a nutshell...it really made me want to play Oregon Trail.

Walk on Earth a Stranger does a great job of making the reader see what going West during the great gold rush would be like.  However, that sadly also means that there are quite a few boring parts and a lot of parts where nothing really happens.

Seriously.  Too many places where nothing really all that exciting happens.

But then the things that do happen, and they are written so well they help you forget the boring, dragging bits!  There was one point in the book that I had a hard time continuing because I was just so grossed out!  I could imagine the situation quite vividly and yeah...Wow.

What I really liked was Leah.  I thought she was very well written and I truly enjoyed reading a story about a strong female.  And even though she starts out pretty strong, we still get to see her go through her own transformation and growth.

All in all, I found Walk on Earth a Stranger to be a very easy, relatively quick read.  Even during the slower parts the pages were just flying by.

My Rating

3.5 stars

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This review is based on a finished copy that I won through a giveaway.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.