Dark Eyes by William Richter

Title: Dark Eyes

Author: William Richter

Publisher: Razorbill

Release Date: March 15, 2012

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

A vigilante would fight for justice at any cost. wally could be that fearless…

But for now, she is a runaway. Her identity is a mystery.

Wallis Stoneman was born in Russian and adopted by a wealthy family in New York City. Beautiful and rebellious, she trades a life of privilege for the gritty streets of Manhattan. She knows nothing of her childhood in Russia. Those years are lost forever.

Until she finds a vital clue to her past.

Now she's sixteen and hardened, and she's just stumbled across a harrowing secret that will change her life forever: Wally's roots are deadly. She's the daughter of Klesko, a notorious Russian gangster who's just broken out of prison.

Danger is her destiny.

Klesko is trailing the fortune Wally's mother stole from him long ago, and he'll stop at nothing to find it…even if it means killing his own blood.

Can Wally find--and save--her mother before Klesko destroys them both?

Despite having seen it floating around the blogosphere, I hadn't really heard that much about Dark Eyes by William Richter before reading it. I am glad I hadn't because nothing could have put into words exactly how awesome Dark Eyes ended up being. Even I may have trouble doing so in this review.

Wally Stoneman had everything she could have possibly wanted but instead she chose to join a crew and start living on the streets of New York City. Now Wally is trying to find information on her Russian birthmother, but that is proving to be more difficult and more dangerous than she ever could have thought. It seems that every new clue to discovering her mother's identity only brings with it more danger and more mystery. And to make things better, two dangerous men are hot on her trail, leaving a string of dead bodies in their wake. Now Wally is racing against time, trying to get to her mother before her birth father does. If she fails, she may never know who her mother was.

Dark Eyes was an absolutely fantastic read. I'll admit that at first I wasn't sure about the book but that was because there were a lot of back stories that needed to be established. But let me just say that once that was done, the story just took off and it was a crazy ride. It was packed with action and full of twists and turns. While there were some parts of the story that I was able to figure out, most of it I didn't see coming. But even when I did see things coming, it didn't stop me from enjoying every moment of the story. William Richter is also a screenwriter and that is definitely something I could see while reading, especially when reading all the action sequences. I definitely loved every part of this book.

One of the things I really liked about the book was the number of characters that were present. The nice thing about them is that they were actually all relevant to the story in some way or other, and at the end of the book they all ended up somehow being connected to one another. My favorite was definitely Wally because there was just so much to her. The was she appeared to the world wasn't everything, the more you peeled back the layers, the more you discovered there was to Wally. All the other characters were also very interesting, and much like with Wally, there was often more than meets the eye to them. The varie cast of characters was definitely one of the reasons I enjoyed the story as much as I did, especially since they really added to all the mystery in the book.

In Dark Eyes, William Richter wrote a fantastic story that was fast-paced, action packed and full of twists and turns. If you are looking for a read packed with action and mystery, then Dark Eyes is the book for you.