Jaguar Sun

I was given a copy of this book for an honest review. Goodreads group Lovers of Paranormal.

Maya Delaney,a junior in high school, is dealing with the normal teenage stresses, boys, parental drama, and school. Little does she know that those would be the least she is going to have to worry about. Strange events plague Maya and she confides in the one person who she can tell anything to, her grandmother, a Mayan elder. Her grandmother informs her that she is a shifter, a person who can turn into an animal. Shifters are tied to the Mayan culture and are looked down upon in her hometown. Maya begins to struggle with her identity, how to tell her friends and family, and dealing with all these strange things that most shifters don't even know about. Maya soon learns that a group called the Toltec is after her and she is struggling to know who to trust. Maya along with the only people she does trust Damien and Alyssa and her on-again off-again boyfriend Matt, try to figure out the mystery of her ties to the December 21, 2012, and what role she plays in it.

The plot was original and had a different spin on shifters than other YA paranormal books. The weaving of shifters mythology and the Mayan culture made the story more interesting and modern. Some parts were fast moving and needed more detail and other parts were slow moving and had too much detail. The main characters were unique and most of them were well developed, with the exception of Matt. Matt's character need more of a back story in order to connect with the reader. The teenagers in this book were depicted as teenagers with their heads on straight which was refreshing. Any teenager who reads it would easily be able to connect with the sassy, teenage style of writing. The end of the book was disappointing. Martha Bourke failed to explain what would happen if Maya failed to complete her task. This made the task seem not as important as it should have felt. The very end of the book came to a screeching halt and was so open ended it made the story seem even more abruptly unfinished.