First off, is anyone else completely stumped by the authors last name? I have spent the last five minutes staring at my computer trying to figure out how to pronounce it and my mouth doesn’t like it. Not at all.
Becca Chandler is suddenly getting all the guys; all the ones she doesn’t want. Ever since her ex-boyfriend spread those lies about her. Then she saves Chris Merrick from a beating in the school parking lot. Chris is different. Way different: he can control water just like his brothers can control fire, wind, and earth. They’re powerful. Dangerous. Marked for death.
And now that she knows the truth, so is Becca.
Secrets are hard to keep when your life’s at stake. When Hunter, the mysterious new kid around school, turns up with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time, Becca thinks she can trust him. But then Hunter goes head-to-head with Chris, and Becca wonders who’s hiding the most dangerous truth of all.
So I’ve looked at these books a lot over the year or so they’ve been available because they always sounded good but I was completely turned off by the covers. And, yes, I know we’re not supposed to judge, etc etc. But, well…I do. I am unabashadly a cover judger.1
But then Wendy and The Midnight Garden were hosting a blog tour and if the books had Wedny’s stamp of approval, they had to be good, right?
So, I thought I’d give the first two a try to see if I was interested in signing up for the tour of the third one. And basically I read them in under 48 hours and immediately NEEDED more.
I can’t even explain it. I’m not going to say these books do anything new or particularly unique. They’re just good fun, entertaining reads that were easy to get through but not easy to put down. I may have read some on my phone while hiding in a corner at work.
There’s a large cast of hot guys who have magical powers. There’s mysteries and questions and teenage drama, a bit of a love triangle in Storm, though Spark is blessedly love-triangle free. And I loved, loved that each book focuses on a different brother (and, well…one book will focus on someone who isn’t a brother…but no spoilers) instead of drawing out storylines that are good where we left them.
Though, I will admit to some trepidation in this choice as Storm had quite an abrupt ending and I didn’t think I would care about the new main girl in the next book because I wasn’t finished with Becca, but Brigid Kemmerer proved me wrong and now I love Layne so much and don’t think I want to move on to whoever is next.
I feel this will continue throughout the series.
I do feel there is a certain lack of world building? Or at least we don’t see it all. There’s a lot about feuds and magic-police-type-people and a lot of that didn’t feel terribly well thought out to me. Certain aspects of the world are brought up and then never mentioned again, or mentioned in a way that doesn’t make sense with the way they were previously mentioned. I don’t know how to explain, something just felt off to me. And with the changing of main characters it feels like a lot of questions will never get answers.
And I’m still not entirely sure what Spirit users can do. Like, they seemed to say one thing about them at first and then something completely different later on?
But this didn’t really bother me because I liked the sarcastic, hot, magic using boys. And the girls they fall in love with.
If you’re looking for a light, urban fantasy that wont require anything of you other than a sense of fun, look no further!
And, I did decide to sign up for the tour at the Midnight Garden so look for a review of Spirit soon!
- I have never wanted to add a gif into a review as much as I want to put in the one of Lizzie Bennet saying “Don’t judge me” right here…which is ironic considering I’m defending my judging of covers.