Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
YA Fantasy
December 2009
Grade: B-
On the surface, Ethan Wate has it all: an old Southern Lineage which makes him royalty in his small town, an ex that would happily become a current, and all the adoration that a teenage basketball star could want.
Inside, he is a mess. He still aches from the loss of his mother. The woman raising him is a vodoo witch (literally), and his father has gone awol since his mother's death. Not even his dreams are safe - he is haunted by a young woman whose face he cannot see but whose destiny he must preserve. When Lena Duchannes, niece of the town bogeyman begins attending his school (which hadn't had a new student since he was in first grade) he knows everything is about to get messier.
Lena doesn't know why she is drawn to the mortal but she definitely is. There can be no future there -- she is a caster who may very well turn dark on her 16th birthday. She could easily become a hazard to all who know her -- the last thing she needs is a human on her conscience.
But Ethan and Lena pretty quickly realize that whatever is happening is happening to both of them. Will working together help them defeat the dark?
This is a good but not great read. I felt like the authors overloaded the book too much with things it just didn't need and the end result was a fuzzy story line which fizzled rather than banged at the end. On the other hand, the idea of magical people (called Casters) who were all of one gang (werewolves, succubus and witches all together), a super natural library with a mortal librarian, seeing eye dogs that really see for their master--those were all pretty good.
Maybe not a rush to buy but a book that would make a good rainy day read.
Tea: Anything that goes well with rain!
