ENTICE

Jones picks up directly after the end of Captivate (2010), when Zara allowed Astley to kiss her and turn her into a pixie. Being a pixie, never mind Astley’s pixie queen, terrifies Zara—but she did it so she can potentially travel to Valhalla and retrieve her maybe-dead boyfriend Nick. The thrust of this third installment is that quest: Find Valhalla, recover Nick. Pixie king Astley helps Zara and loves her; she begins to reciprocate even while pining for Nick at every moment. Unlike most love triangles in the genre, this one’s outcome feels refreshingly unpredictable. The small Maine town establishes a curfew and the FBI arrives, but evil pixies still murder teen after teen. Epic war approaches, on earth and in the gods’ realm. It’s hard to say whether Zara’s burning need to find Nick either trumps her earnest desire to protect innocent people from deadly pixies or blends with it—Nick’s a critical leader/warrior, after all. Fans of the first two will continue to swoon, enjoying prose that’s idiosyncratically casual (Valhalla feels “ungettable”) and indulgently, oh-so-teen-like angsty (“Your sigh smells like sorrow”). (Paranormal romance. YA)