About the Book:

“There were no surprises in Gatlin County.

We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was a curse.

There was a girl.

And in the end, there was a grave.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.”

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This was a surprise book, that really caught me off guard.  I have been shying away from many of the newest teenage angst, coming of age in the supernatural world following in the wake of the Harry Potter series.  Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed the series as much as everyone else.  But I get frustrated with the books that everyone seems to be talking about.  Hype fiction just gets to be so over publicized — much to the determent of so many other excellent authors out there.  Combine that with the latest trend in young adult fiction of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches and everything else dealing with the supernatural — and I am starting to feel like they are all the same.  Consequently I was a little surprised when I came across this one and was interested.  (OK, I will admit it — it was the cover that drew me in.)

This one I particularly loved because of the unique approach of Garcia and Stohl.  Primarily this is a story that is grounded in the deep south, and is based in a family’s history.  Surrounding this family is generation after generation of rumor and suspicion about the bizarre things that are attributed to the members of this family.  Why did I find this approach so unique? Well — because everyone knows what it is like to have one member, or family of a community where they grew up that has these types of stories attached to them.  The local haunted houses that all the kids dare each other to break into as a right of passage, the strange old man on the next block over that is always yelling at the kids to stay off his property, and has unintentionally invited the mischief making of the local kids, or the crazy bag lady that has more stories about her — but no one seems to know the truth.  It was just simply a premise that was easy for readers to identify with.  And — to be honest — uncovering the truth behind those rumors always makes for a great story.

I also felt particularly drawn to the characters because I was always one of those kids that never seemed to fit in with the in crowd.  Being a teenager is a hard thing.  It is often frustrating, and challenging to find a place where you fit in, and then still define yourself as an individual among everyone else around you trying to do the same thing.  Lena and Ethan are great characters for demonstrating the challenges facing everyone growing up in the world.  The choice of who you want to be, and who you want to be it with.  This classic tale of the misfits being drawn together and forming a bond that is always so much more profound than the other kids around them is another subject that readers can identify with — because these growing pains are one that every person goes through at one point or another in their lives.

The mystical portion of the book — the casters are also different from many of the stories that I have seen out there lately.  It has taken its own story of “witches” and turned it into something new and different.  Grounded in the background history of the family, and the source of the mystical powers that this unusual family seems to have, there is more here than simply a witches and warlocks invention.  The story is unique in how it has been written, and it is creative and fun to read.  The connection between Ethan and Lena, as well as the characters of Lena’s family are all fun to read about — and the story is a great good vs. evil theme.  This unique story combined with the mystical feel of the old south, and the origin of the story set back during the Civil War — and you have the makings of a wonderful read.

Tags: Family, Friendship, Historical Fiction, Love, Mystery, Romance, Young Adult

Category: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult Fiction