Genre: YA ParanormalRelease Date: March 2011, Dreamscapes Ink
Format: eBook (Kindle)
Source: Purchased from Amazon.com
When teen witch Ivy MacTavish changes a lizard into her date for a Halloween dance, everything turns to chaos. And when no one is powerful enough to transform him back except Ivy, it sparks the rumor: Like father, like daughter. Ivy has heard it all before - that her father, who left when she was seven - was involved with the darkest of magic.
Making the rumors worse, someone uses an evil spell book to bring back two of history's most nefarious killers. Ivy's got a simple plan to set things right: find the real dark spell caster, steal the book, and reverse the spell. No problem! But she'll have to deal with something more dangerous than murderous spirits that want her and her friends dead: the school's resident bad boy and hotter-than-brimstone demon, Nick Marcelli. Nick's offering Ivy more than his help with recovering the missing book - he's offering her a way to ditch her scaly reputation as a lizard-lover. Demons are about as hard to handle as black magic, and as Ivy soon discovers, it's going to take more than a lot of luck and a little charm if she wants to survive long enough to clear her status as a dark witch, get a warm-blooded boyfriend, and have her former date back to eating meal worms before the week's end.
MY THOUGHTS
I was not familiar with Michelle Muto or The Book of Lost Souls until I heard about an Independent author event that is coming up in a town right near where I live. I had only read books by one of the authors who will be there (Nichole Chase), but I wanted to familiarize myself with the other authors who would be attending and hoped that in doing so, I'd find some new favorites!
Well, I can safely say that Michelle Muto is definitely one of the new favorites! I really enjoyed The Book of Lost Souls. Rather than writing strictly a dark paranormal book, Muto skillfully interjects humor into scenes that makes this story more reminiscent of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and some of L. J. Smith's earlier works (which I loved). One aspect even made me think of Harry Potter (you'd probably understand why if you've read it). Though mildly predictable (I'd be surprised if anyone reading this book didn't figure out who the "mystery man" was) and not without typos and phrasing issues that could be fixed with another round of editing, The Book of Lost Souls is overall a very imaginative, entertaining read with an intriguing premise and likeable characters. Not to mention, we get a little bit of everything when it comes to supernatural characters... witches, vampires, werewolves, and demons!
My hope is that in future books (this is the first in the series), the characters will be fleshed out a little more thoroughly, but for an independently published debut book, this is definitely one of my favorites! By the way, it's a steal of a deal on Amazon if you've got a Kindle or the Kindle App, so I encourage you to give The Book of Lost Souls a try if you enjoy YA Paranormals!
Read this book...
- if you liked L.J. Smith's books written in the 1990's and re-released in recent years (particularly the Night World series and NOT the newer titles, ie. continuing The Vampire Diaries (even before the ghostwriting started) -- they simply aren't the same)
- Nichole Chase's The Dark Betrayal series
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Sounds like a fun book! I wish it was better edited, though. When I come across typos or editing errors, they often jar me out of the story for a few moments.
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