Bel Reviews: Alyson Noel's - "Echo"
How lucky were we to have 2 books of the Soul Seekers series by Alyson Noel on our shelves in 2012?
Where the cover of Fated was all about the warm yellows and the earthy tones, Echo is all about winter. Snow flakes and a girl in a flowing white dress with really full skirts draws you in, only to have you look a little deeper and notice an ominous looking tunnel leading to god knows where.
Here’s the blurb from goodreads.com
“She inherited a magical destiny—and a mission to stop a powerful family of dark sorcerers. She never expected to fall in love with one of them.
There’s still so much Daire Santos has to learn about being the last Soul Seeker….and about herself. As her magical training becomes more intense, so does her relationship with Dace. But when she learns that his connection to the evil Richter family goes far deeper than she ever imagined, she begins to question if love really can conquer all.
Dace is painfully aware that he wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the Richters’ dark magic—and now his brother Cade is determined to use his love for Daire against him. Dace is willing to sacrifice anything to protect the girl he loves —including his own life. But will Daire allow it? And what if defeating Cade costs not only his life, but his soul too?”
I giggled with anticipation when I got this book in the mail (my mail lady thinks I’m nuts) and I couldn’t wait to turn to that first page and re-immerse myself into the world of Enchantment.
Darie’s circle of friends grows and I love to see forgiveness rather than gullibility in my hard-ass heroines. It’s also refreshing to see Daire’s Mum still being treated with respect by the author. It would have been way to easy to just throw her in the ‘parental units must fail‘ basket and be done with it.
The disturbing bits are extremely effective and the action sequences are well mapped out and easy to follow.
For those of us who love a bit of romance, there’s ample mush and kisses to keep us happy, but not so much that it’s the main focus of the plot line.
As I keep repeating, it’s always a good idea to read the series in order, to get an accurate grasp of character development and story arcs. It is with good reason that the third book, Mystic, is on my most anticipated books of 2013 list.
Paperback,352 pages
Published November 13th 2012 by St. Martin’s Griffin
ISBN: 0312575661 (ISBN13: 9780312575663)
