Identified: The Maya Price Story by Faith A. Rice-Mills

Maya Price is a typical eighteen-year-old girl without many worries. Her biggest problems include getting ready to leave her hometown for college, figuring out how to avoid her ever-so-strange stepmother and trying to muddle though her feelings for her best friend, Pete. Yet, one of her last nights in her hometown, she and Pete are in a car accident. A stranger pulls Maya from the accident, leaving Pete behind, and takes her out of this world and into another dimension. Maya soon discovers that she has been taken to a dimension called Leets by a group of people that call themselves shifters. Shifters are of mixed human and onyx blood and have various abilities. These shifters are able to travel between dimensions, control the four elements (fire, earth, wind, water) and the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch and taste). Their leader, Victoria, informs Maya that she, too, is a shifter and that she must choose to join them or risk being sought out by their greatest enemy, a shifter named Leonas. Maya joins Victoria and her ragtag group of rebel shifters at a training camp called Level One. he is teamed up with a group of seven other shifters, including a streetsmart girl named Luz, who is especially adept at controlling fire, her twin sister Espy, and a nervous boy named Lamar, who can manipulate sound better than any other shifter. Together, Maya’s team trains for the battles that will soon be inevitable. However, Maya soon learns that her purpose is not to just move the earth or send water flying into the air. There are rumors of a hidden prophecy and that the prophecy mentions Maya by name. Supposedly, the prophecy says that Maya will one day have to choose a side and will be essential in bringing her chosen ally to power...
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Pink highlighting are spoilers, just highlight over them to see them                    

                        Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars

                        Series book: Yes

                        Will I read the Next: Yes

Well damn. I'm speechless. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, or watch a  lot of sci-fi, or associate with sci-fi(I didn't even  watch  Star Wars. That's right "I am your father" is lost on me). So because of how sci-fi this book sounded, I wasn't expecting much. But I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Identified is definitely worth the time it took to read.

I  first started reading this book a few months ago, but I put it down again after a few chapters. The reason I stopped was because every word that ended with "ing" was changed to just end with "in'" instead. I am sorry, but this is my biggest pet peeve. "Country writin.'" But, thankfully, after Maya left Diamond, it stopped for the most part. Otherwise, I thought having those entries and records every few chapters got confusing. Some were in the past, others in the future, sometimes I thought it spoiled itself. But after you got use to that, the writing was pretty easy to get through. 

This is one of those "There is a prophecy...You-random person from random place-are the chosen one" books. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's basically what gives this story purpose.    It was different from other stories of it's kind because the prophecy was more recent and Maya was mentioned by name. In that way it was pretty original. It was also a really unpredictable book, every time you think somethings gonna happen Bam! 180. You're back to not knowing what the hell is going on. That also made it just a little bit confusing, but not enough so that you wanna put the book down. The plot was well paced, definitely not boring, and totally original.

I feel like at the beginning it was much harder to get to know the characters than later in the book. All I got from the family was that they were nice and very country. Later on though, the characters were alot easier to picture. They all had backstories, reasons to fight, and distinct personalities. I think Maya was a pretty ideal main character, she had insecurities but didn't let them cripple her, reasons to fight, and everything to lose.

At first I thought Nathaniel might be the romantic interest in this book, but nope he wasn't it. Neither were any of the other guys in Leets. She had this thing for Pete but they weren't even in the same dimension...Let's just say there isn't actually any romance to review. 

SUMMARY OF REVIEW(In case you don't actually feel like reading the review):

Writing:  4 out of 5

Plot: 4.5 out of 5

characters: 4.5 out of 5  

Romance: NA out of 5

Overall: 4.5 out of 5

PG-13 Gruesome violence