7.13.2012

Hearts of Darkness by Kira Brady Review


Kayla Friday’s life dramatically changed the day she arrived in Seattle Washington to identify her sister’s body at the morgue. Within minutes, she is thrust into a world of paranormals who are looking for a necklace that was in her sister’s possession. Without a clue to what is going on, Kayla clings to a man named Hart who she meets at the morgue, to help her.  The only problem is, Hart’s job is to recover that necklace by any means possible and helping Kayla is just a ruse to get his hands on it.  Also she’s pretty sexy and he wouldn’t mind getting her into bed.

As Kayla tries to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, her attraction for Hart grows more and more every day. But little does she know another man has his eyes set on her, and he plans to make her his next prized possession.  Will Kayla find the necklace and make it home safe or will her trip to Seattle be her last?

Hearts of Darkness is the first book in the Deadglass Series by debut author Kira Brady.  At first I had trouble getting into this story right from the beginning.  Kayla’s sister’s dead body is set on fire in front of her and a couple pages later, she grabs onto a perfect stranger named Hart and starts kissing him.  My jaw actually dropped when Kayla started checking out Hart and did this. How could you think about a man, how could you be attracted to a man, after just seeing your dead sister in a morgue and watching her body burn? And you react by kissing a stranger?? Ok.

The romance between Hart and Kayla was not enjoyable for me because it never had time to develop. They kiss in Chapter 3 before they’ve even gotten to know each other at all. This ruined the chase for me. You know when one person in a romance novel is chasing after another and they don’t know if the other really likes them or not? Well we didn’t have any of that.  We knew from the very beginning that Hart wanted to screw Kayla, and we knew Kayla although supposedly a virgin, was QUICK to jump into bed with the first man she meets in Seattle.

The word ‘’Lady’’ is used over and over and over in this story instead of God.  The Lady is one of their Gods and they say her name constantly.  I had no idea who this Lady is but eventually it was sort of explained. I started counting at one point how many times Lady is used. After 15 times, I stopped counting.

The world that Kayla was in was already built for me as it is practically identical to Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series world, so I didn’t have trouble picturing it.  At times I got confused because of the extreme similarities between the two series.  In both series the main character is traveling far to a place where their sister was studying, was found dead/possibly murdered, had a secret boyfriend, and was living in a place that was overrun by paranormal beings that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. In both series the main character clings on to the first man she meets.  In the Fever Series, Barron; In Deadglass, Hart.  There are numerous more similarities but they would create spoilers for both series so I won’t mention them.

I had extremely high hopes for Hearts of Darkness when I heard it’s comparable to KMM’s series.  I didn’t think the comparison was because of near identical plots.  I assumed it would be because of the writing or some other aspect.  After having read a lot of urban fantasy novels, (I don’t know why this is classified as paranormal romance) this story just doesn’t feel unique to me.  I feel like I’ve read it before, too many times.

Despite all of my complaints, I WILL be continuing on with this series to see if it will develop more. It did have a fast pace and the action was enjoyable.  Unfortunately, the negatives still outweigh the positives with Hearts of Darkness.  

                                          MY RATING:

4.30.2012

One Moment by Kristina McBride Review

Summer is supposed to be when teenagers have the time of their lives. They discover themselves, have relationships, party, and make lasting memories with their best friends.  For Maggie, her summers will never be the same again.  It took one moment, one second, and forever her life was changed.

After witnessing her boyfriend’s accidental death, Maggie immediately suffers from amnesia of what happened because of the shock.  Maggie and her boyfriend Joey were about to go cliff diving together, Joey jumped, Maggie didn’t, and Joey fell to his death.  All of their friends were at the bottom of the cliff and they want to know what went wrong. After all Joey has cliff jumped a million times before. The one time he takes Maggie to jump with him, he dies?

Joey’s death becomes an investigation because of it’s suspicious nature. Maggie’s best friend Adam is by her side, holding her hand through it all. But Adam was Joey’s best friend and he is suffering as well.  When he starts to withdraw from Maggie and becomes distant, she starts to feel like she is all alone.  It doesn’t help that whenever Adam is around, she gets flashes of memories coming back to her that don’t make any sense. How will she make sense of her life and what happened without Adam by her side?

ONE MOMENT is a young adult story that explores the topic of grief in a heartbreaking and real manner.  I could relate to every emotion Maggie went through after Joey’s death.  From having the image of him dead glued in her brain and wanting to rip her eyelids out because it hurt too much, to wishing she did something different to change the course of what happened.  Going to a funeral and having that out of body experience where you can’t believe this is happening, all of it, was real and something everyone has had to deal with one time in their life.

I felt Maggie’s grief deeply and I felt for her and every emotion she experienced dealing with her tremendous loss.  ONE MOMENT has a mystery element to it because the reader is given a clue as to what happened to Joey, but not the whole story. As we read we truly don’t know if Maggie as the narrator is dependable and truthful, afterall she is suffering from amnesia.  So at one point I started to question if what she was narrating was even reality.

ONE MOMENT is the best Young Adult book that I have read in a very long time.  It is so good that I can’t manage to even read any other books right now because all I can think about is Maggie and Joey.  When an author’s characters come alive like Kristina McBride’s have done for me, that is a big deal.  That is DAMN GOOD writing at it’s finest.

Read ONE MOMENT.  You won’t regret it.


MY RATING