I smell a huge rant coming on... 
 The synopsis was okay. It was intriguing, dark, mysterious, and it didn't spoil anything. Unfortunately, the actual book was nothing like that. First of all, I didn't like the characters. At all. John was as plain and as boring as his fake name. So was his straight white hot popular kind sweet girlfriend with an equally awful name: Sarah. I couldn't find a way to relate to these kids and, trust me, I tried. 
 I also disliked the fact that the write dragged the action until the last 65 pages. Why? And the action had basically no climax, no interesting stuff, no good parts, and, what's more, it turned worse when the dog turned into...what was it again? A bird? A dragon? 
 The storyline and the idea was just as bad. 9 alien(ish) kids are sent to Earth to...well, to generate Pittacus Lore's story. They are under some kind of spell that only allows them to be killed in the order of their numbers. The first three are dead and-guess who's next? The main character (No. 4) is only stressed about this "next to be killed" thing only a few chapters, because then he falls in love and forgets about it all and Lore kind of just ignore it through the book. 
 Now the worst part of them all: the style of Lore's writing. 
 It sometimes takes a little time for me to get used to a certain style of writing, but Lore's was just unacceptable. I got used to F. Scott Fitzgerald and to James Dashner and even to Garcia Marquez and I thought I could get used to any style. But I was wrong. The book had no emotion from the beginning to the end and it didn't make me feel anything at all. The characters didn't feel real, the words they spoke were so unnatural and every single sentence sounded as if it were written either lazily or in a hurry (not to mention the very frequent typos). The idea was kind of good (not that good, though), but freaking teenage authors could've written it better. Even I> could've done it better (and I suck at writing). 
 The only acceptable parts were two characters that actually felt okay to me: Sam and No. 6. I liked Sam because he was passionate about aliens and he was the geek of the school. I also liked 6 for the fact that she was quite different from the other alien dudes. But still, these characters seemed a little forced. 
 Conclusion: Twilight but with aliens and flying dogs