Creatura by Nely Cab

Creatura is the first book in Nely Cab's Creatura series, and it was an interesting start.  Isis has been plagued by a mysterious creature in her dreams, causing her months of sleepless nights.  She finally decides to face her fears and confront this monster, only to discover it is not a monster, but a man.  One who is anything but a dream.  A jealous/violent ex-boyfriend, multiple discoveries, and a loving sacrifice through Isis' world upside down.  Will her life ever be normal again?  How will she be able to come to terms with her new discoveries, and possibly new identity?

Honestly I do not know how I feel about this book.  What isn't there to love: gods who are anything but mythical, a dangerous ex boyfriend, shocking news, young love.  Sounds amazing right?  Unfortunately, this novel seemed to fall short for me.  Maybe it is because I have read so many novels dealing with mythical pantheons, I had incredibly high expectations.  The mythology involved was well written and interesting, I wanted a little more on the Creatura other than basically being forbidden undesirable beings who were supposed to have been completely exterminated.  Then other creatures are mentioned such as Tribus (I think I spelled that correctly) but we aren't given much more information on them. 

The characters were weak, and almost generic.  At times I liked David, but other times I hated him.  He almost always contradicts himself.  One point he is sweet, caring, romantic, but then becomes possessive and borderline abusive.  When Isis simply says "hi" to a male classmate, David flies off the handle and manhandles her.  This is not a quality in a man that we should be promoting to young women as acceptable.  David is quick to anger and doesn't think before he acts, you would think a god would has been around for millennia would know think before he re-acts.  Galen and Eryx are a hilarious duo, I certainly wanted more of their characters.  I enjoyed seeing different aspects of the gods and goddess powers, but they all seemed to be empathic, able to see feelings and internal make-up.  It would have been far more interesting if there were other powers included.  While we are on that subject, David has a few powers that are mentioned but never explained such as his power to tranquilize someone, heal someone and if he is struck the offending person is infested with parasites.  Why is this not explained more??

Overall it was a decent first book to a series and left a lot of questions open that I hope will be answered in upcoming books.  Young adults and those who enjoy a little mythology would enjoy reading this book.  My rating I would give a 3 out of 5 because there were things that were unexplained and character qualities that were somewhat contradictory.