Author- Karen Marie Moning My Rating- 4 STARS Synopsis- MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens. When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae…. |
My Review- I've seen this series on my newsfeed alot and it sort of just kept popping up in recommendations. Strangely enough this was a book I kept skipping over. Maybe it was because I have just finished some pretty major Fae stories/series and was worried this wouldn't be as good, or perhaps I was burned out on the Fae.
Either way, it kept slipping by.
A couple of weeks ago, on a Facebook page an author asked which series, that was popular, have you not yet read and I, for some reason, commented with this series. Then replies came from other readers that this was a great series and one I should try... So, darn it, I did!
And I am very glad I did, and grateful for those who gave me a little push in the right direction. So, at the beginning it gripped me, here was this Pretty - in-pink southern bell with a perfect life and family and majorly tunnel visioned in her safe world. Then that world is turned upside down with the death of her sister, Alina, who had gone to Ireland to study. Or so Mac believed. Until she hears an ominous voicemail message on her phone by her sister before she died full of barely revealed secrets and paints a picture of being murdered by a man she loved.
Mac, though full of grief, throws aside her perfect world to find answers and to harass the Irish police to reopen her sister's case with the new evidence she has. And this made me adore Mac from the beginning. Is she a little whiny throughout the story? Sure. Does she show her love for fashion and pretty nail varnish and beautiful hair? Absolutely. She had a normal, pretty girl, life with no shadows marring it. Yet she throws this mostly aside to take on the task of getting justice for her sister. She pleads with authorities, tries to follows clues herself and is brave enough to want to search for more fresh clues.
Only she gets a whole lot more than she bargained for. She discovers a gift that allows her to see beyond Fae glamour and it shows her its ugliness in all forms of horror. This southern bell gets a whole lot of reality straight between the eyes. She is hunted, she is a threat to them and she has no idea who she can trust. They either want to kill her or use her. Even a man named Barrons, who keeps her alive in this new world, can barely be trusted. His intentions are never clear, he has hundreds of secrets and never directly answers Mac's questions. He needs her to find a very important artifact but we are given no clues as to what he will use it for once he has it.
Barrons is dark, frightening, her only ally and a little bit sexy. But there is something about him even I dont trust. I'm sure more will be revealed in the next book. I hope we see more of V'lane, a Fae who makes you strip on the spot without touching, without even asking, you.
The only reason Darkfever did not get a full 5 stars is because somewhere in the middle my attention drifted and the end felt like a non-ending, it was so abrupt after some excitement had just started. This book was full of information, developing characters and setting us up for more that when something really started to happen... It just finished.
So now I am off to buy book 2 to satisfy that need