Switched (A Trylle Novel, 1) Paperback – January 3, 2012

Wendy Everly has never belonged. Her school mates seem repulsed by her, the teachers pick on her and even her own mother tried to kill her at the age of six. So when the new guy, Finn Holmes takes an interest in her, she’s flattered - and confused. She soon discovers that there is more to his attention than meets the eye. Finn has been sent to find Wendy and bring her home, into a whole new world she never knew she was a part of. It’s a world full of magic, intrigue, danger, forbidden love and politics; a world Wendy’s not so sure she really wants to be a part of.I’ve had this novel on my Kindle for a while now and wish I’d read it sooner. This is my kind of story. It’s a magical fairytale in a modern setting, with just the right amount of danger, romance and suspense. It’s the kind of story you can really get lost in. The kind of story you dream about.Finn’s character is intense, yet tempered by duty and diligence. Wendy’s character is less collected, as teenage girls often are, highly emotional, impulsive and yet with a certain level-headed maturity that gets her through confrontations that would have most teens falling apart.Hocking’s writing is not overly poetic or filled with ambiguous figures of speech. It is simple and neat, showcasing a well-planned and executed story without unnecessarily pretty prose. The plot, while predictable at times, is engaging and leaves you with a rather pleasant aftertaste that begs for more. This is genre writing at it’s best - it’s exactly what you would expect from a young adult series, and yet unique and charming enough to make the author’s name a fixture on your reading list.I can’t wait to find out more about what’s in store for Wendy and Finn!

Wendy Everly never fit in anywhere, she was always disgruntled and after her own mother tried to kill her a bit of loner. Although she has her brother and Aunt, moving to a new city she meets Finn Holmes who watches her like a hawk.Finn knows everything about Wendy and the time has come for her to come to her true home where she will belong. However after initially disagreeing to leave, she goes and finds that she still is not feeling at home. The truth behind who she is and what her path may not be what Wendy wants or needs.This was interesting but I found I had a hard time softening to Wendy. Once you get who she is I had a ton of questions that I would have liked answered. Maybe they will reveal themselves in the other two books.

It's too bad that Amanda Hocking (or her publisher) did not take the time to read the ebook version of this story before they made it available for purchase. Even though the premise of the story is very intriguing I spent some time trying to decipher words that were mispelled and sentences that had words placed in an incorrect order. The result was that I would begin to lose myself in the book and then be jerked out of it as I tried to decode what she was attempting to say. The poor editing is insulting.In a time when there is so much technology available to correct mispellings perhaps this author has forgotten one of the basic rules of editing, when you think your material is finished - read it out loud. This process would have immediately shown Ms. Hocking where the editing problems occurred.I have read the reviews of other readers about the 2nd and 3rd parts of this trilogy and I am truly hesitant to spend my money on Ms. Hocking's books as they all seem to have these same deficits. I certainly will not begin any other series by this author. I would be very interested if the material was corrected. In the meantime, I will look for other books that are more polished - there are certainly tons of them out there.

In the beginning I really didn't get what was going on, but rather than put the book down; I persevered! I really liked Finn, and Wendy. I found myself wanting to jump through the pages to throttle her a few times, but she eventually grew on me. She could be such a ninny! This story is really an introduction into her heritage and I really would like to see what else will happen in the magical strange land of the Tryll.

I am sure that this author will turn out some great books in the future, but this one is not well developed. I really liked the premise and the first part of the book was good, but there were many things that just didn't make sense. The main character was a 'princess', but never received any training and yet expected to know all of the rules. Her training would come after 'the ball'. I pretty much just skimmed it to see how it ended, but I wish I would've saved my money.

I really enjoyed this book. It reminded me of [book:Lark|17226481], which is also a fantastic book. If you really liked Lark then you would most likely love this book too.It was a book that kept me wanting to read more, the type of book that I just couldn't put down. I've already downloaded [book:Torn|9716824] and I can't wait to get started.Wendy is growing up and had a few problems with her mother from a very young age and therefore lived with her brother and her Aunt. She never seemed to fit into anywhere, was fussy with food, she hated wearing shoes and her hair never seemed to go how she wanted it too. She noticed that a boy at school kept staring at her and she talked to him one day to find out why he was always staring her and following her around. One day Finn knocked onto her bedroom window and explained to her that she was Trille, which is basically a troll and that she was a princess and needed to move away with him as she was a changeling and basically switched at birth as most Trille are. She refused to go with him and had trouble sleeping one morning so she went for a walk. During this walk she had trouble with people trying to capture her and take her away so Finn Saved her and took her somewhere safe.This is when her life changed, she had to learn the ways of the Trille, get to know other people, and had a big ball where she was to have her christening ceremony and other Trille where to meet her. During the ball problems arose which caused her and the other Trille to fight for their lives.I wasn't too keen on the end, I didn't like that it ended like that and I felt that more could have been done. It just ended rather abruptly for my liking.Overall a fantastic book and I can't wait to read more.

Oh, how I slogged through 'Switched' ! Amanda Hocking clearly has some very good ideas and I really wanted to love this book, but over 300+ pages only about twenty have anything containing something happening.It took me over four months to complete reading this book. I wanted to know what would happen, but only because I had invested time in it in the first place.Once Wendy ends up in Forening, the story derails entirely. The next ten to fifteen chapters deal with 'am I a Princess / don't want to be a princess /I want to go home / I want Finn to be madly in love with me'...it's aset of themes that has the heroine torn, but not in a good way.How this story has stretched to three books, when perhaps one would suffice,is beyond me. But I think the story has been killed because of the want tomake it into three books. There is not enough story to warrant this, so itmust be some cold marketing ploy to get you to buy the others in the set.Switched contains no characters you will care about, in a setting that isbelievable enough but you again, won't care about it.Most annoying is the Finn / Wendy love story. It's the sort of twee nonsensethat saturates what could be a good story.Amanda, you can do better than this!

(I was given this book for free on a read-to-review basis.)17-year-old Wendy lives with her brother and aunt. Her dad is dead, and her mother is in a mental care facility after trying to kill Wendy when she was six.Wendy has been to her fair share of schools and has been expelled multiple times. She's just decided to settle down and try to graduate when a new boy at school - Finn, captures her attention.Finn tells Wendy that she is a changeling. She was swapped at birth and left with a human family when she is really a troll! (Sounds glamorous huh?) Strangely enough the reason that Wendy's mom tried to kill her was because she didn't believe that Wendy was really her child, so as it turns out she was actually correct.Finn takes Wendy to a place called Forening, where the group of trolls, or Trylle, that she comes from live. More surprises are in store though when Wendy finds out that she's not just a Trylle, she's also the Trylle princess!Wendy has never been one for rules and restrictions though, and it turns out that being a princess is far too limiting for Wendy, especially when she's told that she's not allowed to be with Finn because she's the princess and he is below her. Can Wendy change her mother's ideas about what is proper though? Or is the title of Princess really a prison sentence?I enjoyed this book and got through it really quickly. I liked Wendy although at times she did act like a spoilt little madam, and I actually felt a bit sorry for her mum. I think I'd be pretty miffed if I knew that my child had been swapped for another and nobody believed me. Especially seeing as Wendy was a particularly difficult child, and less than grateful for the life she had.I liked Finn and I thought it was unfair that he and Wendy weren't allowed to be together, although I kind-of expected this as soon as it was discovered that Wendy was a princess.Wendy's real mother, the queen, Elora was a total cow to be honest. She had no respect for anyone, and treated Wendy like dirt. To be honest I was expecting Wendy to turn right around and leave pretty much as soon as she met her mother, I know that I wanted her to!I liked that Wendy got to meet the boy she had been switched with (Rhys), and that she wasn't quite sure what he was to her (her brother's brother?). I also liked the idea that the Trylle had powers such as telekinesis, weather control, and seeing the future, and I'm interested to see how these abilities are developed in the next book (which I'm now looking forward to!)8 out of 10.(Book length: 3536 kindle locations)

So... I'll whole heartedly admit that this is another case of the book cover being too good to walk away from; seriously this book has haunted me for months because of how pretty the book cover is. And when I found it in a charity shop for £2.50 and it looked like it had never even been read I couldn't resist.Wendy Everly is 17 years old and a bit of an outcast. She's never really fit in anywhere, not even her own family. And let me tell you before I write this review that I actually liked the book. I liked it even though I know I shouldn't, but this review is mainly going to air my bad opinions of it.So if, before you even grow up and hit puberty, your dad kills himself and then your mum tries to kill you and you're basically raised by your over protective big brother and your too shiny happy aunt you think you would end up a bit messed up. But Wendy just comes across as a normal teenager. She feels like she doesn't really fit in and yadayadayada but there's no real signs of any trauma in her life except for when she goes to visit her `mum' in the mental hospital and even then it's only for a little bit.The next thing is that Finn, the love interest, obviously starts of as this really boring stalker dude who creeps her out, and then the next minute she feels this really intense connection and wishes she had chosen to run away with him and what not. WHAT? Yeah that totally made sense.Then when she does leave she doesn't even give that much of a crap about the family she did leave behind, she only care at like 2 different points. And if she had so much trauma about her other mother you think she would try and make an effort with her new one even though her new one is a bit of a bitch, but no she's happy for her real mum not to give a s***.I think the bits I liked were when she was away with the Trylle, because at least that was interesting, but I think I was more interested in their society and in their powers then any of the actual characters. In fact my favourite characters were the only two character's with any personality Ryan I think that was his name, but I don't really remember) and Tove. Tove because he was manic and Ryan because he was fun.Everyone else you are told what their personality is like but you don't really experience. And of course Finn is the typical love interest. Very wooden, has no life other than protecting Wendy.I think I will read the series still because I'm interested in seeing how these characters develop, if they develop, but mainly what happens to the world and everything, because that's the part I found most interesting

I bought this because I'd read an article about the young author, Amanda Hocking, and was both impressed and inspired by her own story. She has certainly taken note of what is generally taught in creative writing classes, and that is those opening lines which draw you in and I must admit "I was eight years old when my mother tried to kill me" did it for me!Unfortunately after the first three chapters the story took a bit of a downward turn for me, but to be fair this is a book written for teenagers (which I am not!) and is of a genre (fantasy) which is not usually my cup of tea.I finished it and all I can say is that of it's sort, it's okay. It's the first of three in the series, however, personally I won't be reading the other two. If you're 15 and into trolls ...read it.