Practically overflowing with supernatural beasts, this diverting story is more action tale than teen romance.
A teenager with healing powers becomes the target of a particularly nasty—and deadly— vampire in this debut supernatural thriller, the first in a series.
Seventeen-year-old Sara Grey isn’t a typical New Hastings, Maine, high schooler. Her good friend, Remy, for one, is a troll. Unlike most people, Sara believes in the supernatural world, encountering beings collectively known as the People, from imps to goblins. The teen herself is special, too: she’s a healer, often aiding sick and dying creatures. She doesn’t know where she got her ability, nor its dark counterpart, what she calls the beast, a violent stirring in her mind that she constantly fights to keep from surfacing. Tormented by her father’s savage death at the fangs of vampires, Sara peruses message boards for bloodsucking activity, wanting to know whether the murder was more than random. She agrees to meet an online friend’s source, NightWatcher, at a club, where she instead has a run-in with vampire Eli. She gets help from Nikolas, a member of a warrior race called the Mohiri that hunts anything threatening humans. Nikolas also has answers, aware of at least part of Sara’s origins. Nikolas and Sara’s pals Roland and Peter try to prevent an obsessed Eli from finding the girl, but she may need to protect herself by unchaining the beast. The author packs an abundance of mythical creatures and twists into her fast-paced tale. Sara ultimately confronts werewolves, witches, and hyena-like crocottas; some are evil and others are surprising allies. It’s a wonderful assortment of beasts, even if readers already know most of them. Sara learns what she is before the story ends, revelations involving her estranged mother and a startling connection to both Mohiri and vampires. Lynch wisely mutes the romance, merely hinting at something between Sara and Nikolas, while the monstrous vampires are anything but amorous. The teen can be too contrary, more invested in a powwow with NightWatcher than her own safety. But she’s undoubtedly worthy, summed up best when she replies to a question of why she heals the People: “Why wouldn’t I heal them?”
Practically overflowing with supernatural beasts, this diverting story is more action tale than teen romance.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-94242-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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