Tag Archives: magic

Cold Burn of Magic (by Jennifer Estep)

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Young Adult / Urban Fantasy

Lila lives in a town ruled by magical mobsters. After her mother was murdered by the most violent of the mobsters she went into hiding living in a tiny room in the basement of a library and making money by robbing cashed up tourists.

When she steps in to rescue Devon, the son of one of the crime bosses she suddenly finds herself reluctantly pulled into the world. Forced to work as his bodyguard. If she can survive a year she will earn her freedom, but with one attack after another, Devon is proving to be a dangerous person to be around.

 

Really great book. Loved every single moment. That is all.

Screen Shot 2014-02-27 at 9.12.41 pmOrange, Red, Yellow. What it means: red-orange-yellow-guide

Robin in the Hood (by Diane J. Reed)

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Young Adult

“Okay, we’re gonna give out this money to whoever our hearts see fit.” His gaze was so keen now it made me quiver. “But Robin, I want you to take a really deep breath.” He paused, waiting for me. “‘Cause the feeling you’re about to get right now––well, you’e gonna remember this night for the rest of your life.”

After her father suffers a stroke Robin quickly discovers that her step-mother has run off, they have no money and both the mob and the police are after them. She bundles up her father, steals a Mazda Miata and goes on the run. They end up in a trailer park inhabited by a loveable bunch of misfits and miscreants.

They share what they have and care for each other and before long Robin starts to see them as family.  But one of her neighbors has cancer and they desperately need money to pay for her treatment so Robin teams up with Creek to take a little money from the rich bad guys and redistribute it to the not so rich.

Robin in the Hood is a modern retelling of the Robin Hood story with a completely nutters band of merry men (and women).  It’s light and fluffy Young Adult fiction with a very healthy dose of magic.

“Wait, what do I do?”
“You git on a helmet honey!” crackled a voice in the darkness. Granny Tinker appeared next to us with a pot on her head. She shoved one onto mine. “This here’s WAR.”

The Water Witch (by Juliet Dark)

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“Ah, there you are! We got worried when you didn’t answer the door and went looking for your key. Only it doesn’t seem to be under your gnome.”
“It’s here,” I said, nudging a flowerpot full of geraniums with my toe.
Liz and Diana exchanged a puzzled look. “Why would you put it there? It belongs with your gnome,” Diana said, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. “Everyone hides their key under their gnome.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of hiding the key if everyone knows where it is?”

 

 

Half fairy and half witch, Callie has a lot of magic. As a doorkeeper it’s her job to protect the doors between Faerie and the human world. But with a vengeful water nymph on the loose and looking for a mate, two men trying to get her into bed, and The Grove an ultra conservative group of witches plotting to close the door to Faerie forever and banish all other worldly creatures she has a lot on her plate.

With some help from her friends, including a succubus, a fairy, a Norse demigod, and her former lover (an incubus) she needs to unlock her powers if she is to have any hope of saving the people she loves and keeping the door open.

There is a lot going on in this book. At times I wondered how it could possibly work but Juliet Dark manages to pull all the threads together in an engaging and suspenseful book about witches and fairies, gods and demons, magical creatures of the forest and the water. Occasionally The Water Witch reads a little like a young adult novel but this book is definitely for more mature readers.

Many thanks to Ballantine Books and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.