I was recommended Alone by a friend who read the first two and really likes having someone else to talk to about things she likes (as do I, don't we all?). So after reading like... ten other books, I finally picked up Alone. This is a very short book. It only had a hundred and sixty six pages on my kobo, and about fifteen of those were previews/copyright pages/etc. So it's an easy read in terms of length. In terms of content, however? That's a whole different story. 
 Let's start with our heroine, Sienna. She's terrible. Her mother has apparently been keeping her locked in their house for twelve years with zero outside contact for Sienna at all, no questions asked. You would think with all that isolation that Sienna would have a wealth of problems with social interaction, but nope! She's a little ignorant about things, but she carries on conversations just fine and dandy and has no problems interacting with people when she wants to. Yeah, whatever, I don't buy it, especially when we get halfway through the book and discover that whenever she was 'bad', her mother would shove her in an iron maiden type box for anywhere from hours to days. Yet she has no signs of mental or physical abuse. Uh-huh... So yeah, Sienna is a bitch. Apparently her free hour of television a day was spent watching Gossip Girl or anything from the older WB/CW network and deciding that being a snarky, mean bitch would make her awesome and badass. Well, it doesn't, not by a long shot. She's basically just a bitch to be a bitch. Sure, she thinks she's being funny and loveably sarcastic (some of us do love our snarky badass chicks), but she's not, she's just a horrible person. The only two people she's somewhat decent to are the 'hot guys', Reed and Zack, simply because she finds them hot. I felt more sympathetic to Adriadne just because Sienna kept acting like such a stuck up bitch to her for no damned reason, thinking petty shit like how Adriadne dresses to compensate for something and has a horrible ass to outright saying that Adriadne looks like shit most of the time. For what reason? There's actually no good reason, Sienna just wants to be a raging bitch and be incredibly petty. At one point Sienna thinks "Haha, Adriadne is just getting used to my witty bitchiness, good." Ugh, I hate this girl. *gives Sienna the middle finger* She's supposed to be a genius because her mom made her study really hard and read a lot, but we don't see any of this, we're just told she's super-duper smart and we have to basically accept it. Well, considering what an idiot I think she is, I'm gonna go with a big NOPE on that one. She demands that the Directorate agents take her back to her house just because she thinks she's going to be able to kick Wolfe's ass, only to get all those agents killed except a couple. Once again, we're told she feels bad about the agents dying, but we don't see it, especially because she refuses to own up to it. 
 Wolfe, the antagonist, is so two dimensional and cliche that he's almost cartoony. He was hired to find Sienna and bring her to his bosses. We're never told who they are or why they want her, but they exist, supposedly. Well, Wolfe gets mad when Sienna makes him bleed a little and decides he's going to rip her guts out and rape her as revenge. Classy. This leads to him murdering literally hundreds of people to get Sienna to leave the Directorate and 'play' with him. Seriously? How over-the-top villainous do you want him to be? Why didn't he just twirl his moustache and have a 'mwahaha' laugh? It's so unbelievable, he's basically just the irredeemable bad guy for no reason than to be the bad guy. He has no layers. He's super old, super strong, and can't curb murderous instincts over something so petty as a seventeen year old giving him a nosebleed. I just laughed every time he appeared because I couldn't take him seriously. 
 I'll admit that Wolfe put Sienna in a crap position, giving her the choice of 'get raped and murdered or let innocent people die' and it's easy enough to condemn her for hiding while hundreds of people got slaughtered. However, I wouldn't want to be defiled by this nutcase either, but I wouldn't want people to get killed either. So, like I said, it's a really horrible choice, but it's dumbed down by the fact that Wolfe is being shown as an insane animal who kills just to kill and that the Directorate did fuck all to stop it. Their solution? Wait for M-Squad, no matter where the hell they are, because Sienna is more important than the rest of the word. Yeah, give me a break. Still, Sienna is terrible because she doesn't even feel real remorse for the people that are being killed. Sure, it SAYS she does, but I never feel like she actually does. So what if she curls up into a ball on the floor in front of the television while watching the news and refuses to eat? She's still alive and denying herself 'luxuries' isn't going to bring those people back or stop Wolfe's rampage. 
 So finally she decides to go after Wolfe. She isn't going to fight him until she has some big angry revelation when she sees the box and remembers all the bad shit her mom did to her. She snaps and decides to choke Wolfe, who then dies. Say... what? Turns out she's really Rogue from the X-Men! Haha, just kidding, she has similar powers to Rogue, where if she touches someone for too long they die (and apparently get absorbed into her mind?). The Directorate classifies her as a succubus and says she's one of the most powerful metas in the world. Oh, haha, I guess we're actually in DC Comics, not Marvel. Kidding aside, her 'touch kills' powers are bullshit. She's been touched plenty of times. Wolfe tried to strangle her and cut her freaking abdomen open but didn't freak out about how her touch burned. Yes, she wore a turtleneck, but I doubt when Wolfe grabbed her throat that his hand wouldn't have touched her jaw. I also doubt his fingers wouldn't have touched her skin when he was trying to rip her intestines out. Next, her being a succubus... LOL. The lore is outlined right in the book, but they still decide to label her as one since she can steal energy (and they don't know about the dream thing)? No, just no. Give me Georgina Kincaid or even Jackie Brighton over Sienna Nealon. 
 The premise of this story somewhat has potential, even if it seems like a ripoff of X-Men. But hey, I like X-Men, so I don't have a problem with mutants/metas and stories about them! However, Sienna's story is terrible. Nothing happens. Wolfe attacks, she gets her ass kicked, and tons of people die. Lather, rinse, repeat. Wolfe is a terrible antagonist, Sienna is a terrible heroine, and the plotline is terrible. I get that this is a series, but... what happened to Sierra Nealon, Sienna's mom? Who are Wolfe's employers? Who the hell is Reed? Maybe instead of repeating the same scenes over and over we could have some answers to this type of thing. 
 The editing also leaves a lot to be desired. Alone suffers from semi-colon overload, but I suppose I can overlook that. What I can't overlook is how this book is written in past tense ninety percent of the time and then the other ten percent some present tense sneaks in there. It's one or the other, you can't have both. There are also some typos and missing words, but hey, a lot of books have those, so I'm not terribly bothered. Editors are not miracle workers and not every mistake is going to be caught, so I have no problem giving leeway to that. 
 Alone can take my one star for using metas/mutants. The rest is junk.