Rose Frost has had a difficult childhood moving from
place to place due to the demands of her father’s job – and it has only been
exacerbated by her odd gift, a gift she doesn’t understand and has scared her
in the past.
Her father’s job has now lead her to live with her
grandmother, Daisy, while her family move abroad. Long estranged from the
family, Rose remembers little about Daisy’s home in Warminster, Wiltshire but
quickly re-establishes the few old friends she has in the area
But people are going missing in mysterious ways and there
are definitely secrets being kept in the town. Not least of which the mystery
of Halika Dacome, goddess, saviour, perhaps even devil who is constantly
referred to – and who haunts Rose’s dreams and may be the key to everything –
her gift, her family’s secrets and the enemy that is hunting her.
This book is probably a decent prologue for the series. I
now know who everyone is, what everyone does, I have the world building, the concepts,
the relationships, the setting – I have all the information for the whole book
series now.
But it’s a long prologue and I kind of wanted to read a
book, not a prequel for an actual story. I think this book can be split into 3
parts. In the first, we have a brief introduction where we’re introduced to the
idea that Halika Dacome is going to be reincarnated into a young girl’s body
and that there’s a bad guy who wants to kill her and he has a grandson who’s
not exactly on board for this plan.
Then the bulk of the plot where we follow Rose who is 16
and has an odd gift and lots of hints about someone called Halika Dacome. And
there’s a boy who is attracted to her but everyone says is a wrong ‘un and he
has an evil grandfather. I felt a little like I was given the answers and then
was asked the question – but everyone was acting like the question should be a
great mystery.
It doesn’t help that for the majority of the book she never
explores this power. She uses it to find a mysterious box she doesn’t open (I’m
still not sure what this box is for?) and she uses it to make herself warm when
she’s cold, even when someone is found well and truly mangled and tortured she
doesn’t use her ability to heal. The result of that is that for, maybe, 75% of
the book we have a paranormal novel with precious little of the paranormal – it’s
a mystery, it could be a famous five book.
