Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas # 1) ~ By Zoraida Cordova – 3.5 Stars

Tags

Family Relationships, Fantasy, LGBT Relationships, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

336 Pages

Synopsis: Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives. 

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her with Nova, a brujo boy she can’t trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin.

The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland.

First, how creepily gorgeous is that cover? I’m going to admit that this is why I gravitated toward this in the first place. I also thought Labyrinth Lost had one of the most interesting premises I’ve seen this year. Brujas and Brujos. A whole hidden world of magic and menace. A fifteen-year-old girl, just coming into her powers, which may make her one of the most powerful witches, ever. And because of some tragic events related to magic which took place in her childhood, she wants nothing more than to reject her legacy and be just a normal teen. The story begins promisingly enough, touching upon Alex’s traumatic childhood, and following the event that lead up to her Deathday, where she’ll accept her powers and the responsibilities that come with them. All this completely captivated me right up until the Deathday ceremony goes horribly wrong, and Alex and the rest of her family literally descend down the “rabbit hole” into a world, Los Lagos, that’s part Alice in Wonderland, part Dante’s Inferno, and a little of Pan’s Labyrinth. While I appreciated the gorgeously descriptive world-building, I started losing my connection to the characters and for some reason, never got it back. As I was reading I kept waiting for something to happen that would shock and amaze me, but it never did. I think that this was in large part to the characters and their actions themselves. While I appreciated the cast’s diversity, no one really stood out for me, including Alex. As most of you know I read a lot of books in this genre, and Alex just wasn’t distinguishable from the multitude of heroines I’ve read about in other YA books. As far as the villain in this story, The Devourer, there wasn’t enough development to her character to make her sufficiently scary enough for me. There’s some romance to the story between Alex and her girlfriend Rishi, but to be honest I thought their relationship came off a little stilted and not believable. It was almost as if Rishi was simply created solely for the purpose of having a LGBT romance as part of the story. I know this sounds like I hated this book, but I didn’t. I think this may be a case of “it’s me, not you.” The world-building is breathtaking and I appreciate the author’s diversity in regards to the Latina flair and Alex’s bisexuality. I think this is one of those novels that if the premise intrigues you like it did me, than I encourage you to try it. 

The Devil’s Work ~ By Mark Edwards – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Release Date: September 13th, 2016

376 Pages

Synopsis: When Sophie Greenwood returns to work after four years of raising her daughter, she is ready for an exciting new challenge.

But after an unnerving encounter drags up memories she’d rather forget, things take a turn for the sinister. What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie’s predecessor? When her husband and daughter are pulled into the nightmare, Sophie is forced to confront the darkest secrets she has carried for years.

As her life begins to fall apart at work and at home, Sophie must race to uncover the truth about her new job…before it kills her.

The Devil’s Work is the second book by Mark Edwards I’ve read after last year’s Follow You Home, but what I’ve already learned is that nothing and no one is as they seem, which ratchets up the tension to a fever point. Just to give you an idea of what reading his novels is like, I began this almost 400 page book about 7:30 p.m. was planning on putting it down around 11:00 p.m. and instead wound up staying up until about 2:00 a.m. because I couldn’t tear myself away. Sophie, is a main character who is far from perfect. She helped break up the first marriage of her now husband, and even though they’re happily married with an adorable four-year-old daughter named Daisy, it doesn’t take long before it’s apparent that there are definite chinks in their seemingly solid marriage. Sophie’s dream job of working at her favorite publishing house soon turns into a nightmare. You literally can’t trust anyone here, not even Sophie. Adding to the increasingly sinister and frightening events is the teasingly slow revelations of Sophie’s dark past fifteen years previously when something horrible happened while she was at University. These are laid out like a trail of breadcrumbs in alternating chapters. The book is full of so many twists and turns and OMFG moments that my nerves were completely shot by the time I reached the thrilling conclusion. In the end The Devil’s Work is another fabulous thriller that combines psychological suspense and horror into an anxiety-inducing, action-packed story that I promise you won’t be able to put down!