Hey, guys! Remember the other week when I talked about On The Edge by Ilona Andrews for a Grown-Up Thursday post? Well, I’m back with the follow-up book, Bayou Moon! *Yay*
Summary (from Ilona Andrews’ website):
The Edge lies between worlds, on the border between the Broken, where people shop at Walmart and magic is a fairytale–and the Weird, where blueblood aristocrats rule, changelings roam, and the strength of your magic can change your destiny.
Cerise Mar and her unruly clan are cash poor but land rich, claiming a large swathe of the Mire, the Edge swamplands between the state of Louisiana and the Weird. When her parents vanish, her clan’s long-time rivals are suspect number one.
But all is not as it seems. Two nations of the Weird are waging a cold war fought by feint and espionage, and their conflict is about to spill over into the Edge—and Cerise’s life . William, a changeling soldier who left behind the politics of the Weird, has been forced back into service to track down a rival nation’s spymaster.
When William’s and Cerise’s missions lead them to cross paths, sparks fly—but they’ll have to work together if they want to succeed…and survive.
If you go to Ilona Andrews’ site, she has the first two chapters of Bayou Moon underneath the summary. Thus, I feel like I’m not spoiling anything when I say that I love William with everything in my nerdy little heart for one huge reason. The boy collects action figures… and he talks to them! Now, you may read that and think, “Wow. That’s pretty sad. He must be lonely.”
I read that and thought,” Finally! Someone like me!”
This doesn’t last long, however, since William is recruited for a mission that could very well kill him and he has to leave his trailer and all his lovely action figures behind. So don’t fret, if that’s not your thing. He quickly becomes a bad-ass. But he’s a nerdy bad-ass. *drools*
Cerise is the female lead in this book. She’s strong, beautiful, head of her family in lieu of her parents missing, and a bad-ass as well. I adored her and Will’s meet-cute. It was pretty dang cute. I didn’t even guess it was Cerise until Will said ‘girl’ when addressing her.
Also, Will has a sense of humor! You didn’t really see much of his personality in On the Edge since we never got his POV, but now we do. And he’s funny. This was unexpected, but highly welcomed. I swear I laughed forever when he said, “No. Bad Hobo.” I doubt Ilona meant it to be that funny, but for some reason it amused me greatly. I still chuckle when I think about it.
Just like On the Edge, I have to warn those younger readers that there is a lot of sexual tension and a few paragraphs of “adult time”. It’s not graphic or explicit in any way, but this is not a book for young-ins.
I honestly can’t think of why everybody (over the age of 16 or so) isn’t reading this book. The ending did kind of drag a little and there are a few unanswered questions, which I hope are cleared up in a third book even though it’s not been announced that they’re doing another in the series. (I’m hoping for Jack and/or George getting their own book!) But I was really happy to see Rose, Declan, George and Jack all make appearances and I loved William and Cerise together.
This book was wonderful, as is the first one, On the Edge. If you’re not reading this series, you’re missing out.