Touch the Dark by Karen Chance

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has read or viewed my blog. I woke up last week and when I logged into blogger I found that I was at 2,000 page views!! I know it may not seem like much but for me it is way more than I thought I would get when I first started this review blog some time ago. Thank you again!

Now that that is said, this is the first book in the Cassandra Palmer series by Karen Chance, there are a total of 6 books published and two more anticipated. I have heard that the seventh book in the series has had it's publication date pushed back a couple of times. It doesn't seem that this will be happening any more, hopefully. There is quite a number of books by Chance published, some that go along with this series and ones that do not.



Sometimes being able to see the future isn't as cracked up as it sounds. Cassandra Palmer knows this all too well because her ability makes her sought out by the dead and undead. Ghosts aren't a problem but they will talk your head off. It's all the other creatures of the night that make problems for her. Cassie escaped a crazy house run by an even crazier vampire three years ago and has avoided vampire as much as she can. But the person she is running from has caught up to her and she goes to the vampire Senate for help. Their help comes with a price, and she ends up working with one of the most powerful vampires. He demands a price to be paid as well and Cassie doesn't know if she is willing to pay up.

I guess I go through fazes of getting books that don't have enough action, to getting the books filled with action. Touch the Dark had lots of action, pretty much from about 20 pages in there was almost nonstop action all the way through. I was kept interested with the action but also with the talk about Cassie's back story, and especially a few of the vampires too. As always, I loved that there was more than two mythical creatures in the book. I do plan on reading the second book eventually and I hope to see more of the Fae, and witch aspect. *SEMI-SPOILER ALERT* I did see the part with Tomas coming. I didn't really like him in the beginning, he gave me a weird feeling. *SEMI-SPOILER ENDED* Whereas I wasn't really surprised, I am glad that Chance did that because otherwise events that where going on wouldn't have made sense. I extremely liked that just because one becomes a vampire, they are not automatically "awesome", they get there through lots of work and through the years. Otherwise they are nothing special.

I know I said I liked all the action, but I also had a slight problem with it. There wasn't much down time, and with this things moved really fast. I got confused quite often in the beginning because of this. Cassie would start to talk about her time with Tony and it just wouldn't make sense to me as to what was going on, and then the fighting would start. After a while it did become clearer but that was more toward the end of the book. I would have preferred a little novella to come before this first book just to give a taste as to Cassie's history.

With the couple of problems I had with Touch the Dark I still really enjoyed it. Like I said before I really want to read the second book because things have just gotten started. This is considered an "adult" book, there are a few sex scenes, but I have read much, much worse. A more mature teenager could handle this book no problem. I recommend this book, obviously with the caution to the younger audience because of the sex. I wouldn't mind owning this book, but it remains to be seen how the rest of the series is going to turn out.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Page Count: 307 pages (paperback)

Price: $7.99

Next book: Nightwalker by Jocelynn Drake

Thank you so much for reading!
~Jade


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Shutter by Courtney Alameda

As far as it looks this is Alameda's first book. Is there a second book coming? I don't know, but I do know that there is a book called Pitch Dark in progress. It doesn't not appear to go along the lines of Shutter.

A tetrachromat is someone who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. Micheline Helsing just so happens to be able to do this. One of the last decedents of the Van Helsing family, she has trained from square one to be able to eradicate both corporeal and spiritual monsters. Corporeal get taken out by a bullet, while the spiritual by lens. Armed with an SLR camera and aided by her crew; Oliver, Jude, and Ryder they take down all they can. What should have been a "normal" hunt went wrong, and Micheline and the boys get cursed. One that is like a infection, it spreads through their bodies. Micheline has seven days to exorcise the monster or else she and her friends die. To add one more thing to her plate she's seen as a renegade to her also huge monster hunting father. She's ready to take on this crazy week.

Right away I noticed the Fatal Frame, Dracula, and Van Helsing subject of this book. I was really drawn in with the Fatal Frame feel, I played a little of Crimson Butterfly and I really enjoyed it. Plus it's really creepy to have to "hurt" the entity with a camera. My heart broke learning Micheline's back story, you can't say that that girl hasn't felt broken before. Shutter also started with a lot of action and ended the same way. It held my attention completely and I didn't find myself thinking about anything else in general. I probably should have seen a lot of the book coming, there were hints along the way but I just did not grasp them. The ending was very moving, almost to tears but not quite for me. There is potential for a second book, as a "killer" is on the loose and still unknown. How that will go is up to Alameda. I loved the descriptiveness that Alameda provided, I could really picture the way all the gory-bits looked like. What I loved most where the specialness of Micheline's tetrachromatic eyes, and the monsters in the Obscura. This is one of those books that if I were to try and get everything in, it would be a while.

I didn't have a problem with Shutter. The action was all the way through and I loved every minute of it. I wanted to read to the end. *SPOILER-ALERT* I was genuinely sad once the monster was revealed, I did have a feeling that it was going to be someone close to Micheline. I was just hoping that it wasn't going to be her.*SPOILER-ENDED*

This is another book I recommend for everyone, not just teens. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I think everyone could find something to like in it. I do hope there is a second book, I would really like to know who the other bad people are. I enjoyed Alameda's writing and I can see myself reading Shutter again, along with wanting to pick up another book by her. I would love to have this book in my collection.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Page Count: 372 pages (hardcover)

Price: $17.99

Next Book: Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Thanks for reading!
~Jade