March 5th 2018
432 Pages
After spending her life in foster care, Ava has finally found home. But all it takes is a chance encounter with hot nerd Wyatt Wilcox for it to unravel.
Now, things are starting to change. First, the flashes of memories slowly creeping in. Memories of other lives, lives that Wyatt is somehow in. Then, the healing. Any cut? Gone.
But when Cade and Nick show up, claiming to be her brothers, things get even weirder. They tell her she’s a Phoenix, sent to protect the world from monsters—monsters she never knew existed. It’s a little hard to accept. Especially when they tell her she has to end the life of a Phoenix turned rogue, or Cade will die.
With Wyatt’s increasingly suspicious behavior, Ava’s determined to figure out what he’s hiding. Unless she can discover Wyatt’s secret in time and complete her Phoenix training, she’ll lose the life, love, and family she never thought she could have.-Goodreads
Jumping right into this, I had an issue with Ava. For someone who has spent most of her life in foster care, she is a brat and that is the first impression you get from her. She claims to love her new family so much, that she throws a tantrum and throws it in their face that she is not blood. Its horrible really and for the rest of the book, it left a bad taste in my mouth and I generally did not like or care for her throughout the book. Ava proved to be a very judgmental and stereotypical character. But I kept going through the book. What was the saving grace was the fact that the story is told through different point of views.
But although the idea of the story drew me in, what kept me from fully enjoying the book was how narrow the storyline really was and how there wasn’t enough depth in characters. I wasn’t invested in them and that made me feel some type of way. The romance, cute but not enough for me to ship for them. I liked the build of the story but wished for more mythology. I felt that the author took too much time on little things as opposed giving the characters a deeper history and stronger voice. As for setting the author get points because I saw everything and felt that you know what maybe this could be a thing.
The pace of the novel wasn’t too bad. The author jumps right into the story and I appreciate that. It does stall and plot weakens after a few chapters. The book is just too long and not enough drive to want to finish it.
However, overall I was disappointed in this read because it didn’t provide enough history/mythology, the intensity wasn’t really there, the characters lack substance and the romance wasn’t exactly romantic. Do I think this was a decent start to a series? Kind of. There is a lot of promise and as I see a bunch of conflict in Ava and surround characters’ lives, if the author throws in more past trauma, more once a upon a time this happened, and more chemistry, this will be a great series to look after. I wanted to like this book but it was drawn out without enough passion.
2 Pickles
Motif by Tanya 