Drawn by Cecilia Gray on December 12th 2013
Goodreads
A wholly original tale of friendship and betrayal through the eyes – and lies – of one extraordinary girl.
Sasha has a secret – that she can make you spill your secret with nothing more than a question. Her strange gift makes her a burden to her foster family and a total freak of nature. Not that Sasha cares. Why should she when no one cares about her?
Then the CIA knocks on her door. They want to give Sasha a new identity and drop her into a foreign country to infiltrate a ring of zealous graffiti terrorists. They want to give Sasha something to care about.
To survive a world where no one is who they seem, Sasha needs to make people trust her. But when that trust blossoms into love, Sasha is forced to decide between duty and friendship, between her mind and her heart, and whether to tell the truth or keep her secrets.
Having read The Tyrant’s Daughter a month ago, I was interested in reading more about teenagers concerning the involvement of government agencies such as the CIA or FBI. Drawn is a novel about Sasha, a girl who has the ability to make people say the truth just by being near them. Her ability makes her a useful agent and when she gets a new assignment, she has to use her power and some manipulation to get a Brussels graffiti artist to bring light to a cause that would benefit the CIA (does that make sense?). In short, this book is basically spies and government agencies clashing with the classic coming-of-age story that revolves around art and all that jazz.
In short, you’ll like this book if you enjoy crime shows/mysteries and if you have an appreciation for art (specifically comic books). While I’m not big on mysteries, I do enjoy my fair share of comics. Each chapter starts with a comic that briefly gives hints about Sasha’s life before the CIA and I really enjoyed reading it.
I found Sasha fairly bland and typical. She was upset about her foster mother abandoning her and she was struggling with her mission when all she wanted to do was get ahead in the agency. It was hard to really care about what happened to Sasha and everything that happened because she felt so bland. None of the characters felt fleshed out. In addition, the plot itself was very predictable but it was still well executed. While I could have predicted everything that happened 5 kilometres away, it was still interesting seeing how everything came together.
The romance in this novel is fairly typical but cute. I still have no clue what Seb (short for Sebastion) saw in Sasha and their romantic developments were fairly average. I also felt that the novel lacked a lot of background information. For once, I would have liked to see some info dumps on the CIA/FBI and the art community that Sasha was assigned to infiltrate.
In general, Drawn is an OK and predictable novel. I doubt it will leave any lasting impression on me and I am still a little pissed because of the unresolved ending. Overall, Drawn is a nice light read and I would recommend it for people who love crime shows and art and who are looking for a nice light read. I’m disappointed that I didn’t enjoy Drawn more but it was not as awful as I probably made it sound.
