DARK FROST REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

Hi everyone! Hope you're having a good end of summer. I had a really great time visiting with my family at our family reunion and my mom, uncle, and aunt who were visiting for a few days. We all sadly live all across the country, but it's really fun when we get together.

I have some awesome contests going on, including for C.J. Redwine's debut fantasy/dystopian book DEFIANCE and The Last Days of Freedom Giveaway Hop with a big choice of books to choose from. So if you haven't entered them, be sure to do so. The links are at the top of the blog.

And here's the winners of two contests.

The winner of THE EMOTION THESAURUS is STORYQUEEN!

And the winner of FRACTURED LIGHT is DARLENE!

Congrats! E-mail me your addresses so I can send you your books.

Today I'm excited to share DARK FROST by Jennifer Estep with you. Here's a description from Goodreads:

 I’ve seen so many freaky things since I started attending Mythos Academy last fall. I know I’m supposed to be a fearless warrior, but most of the time, I feel like I’m just waiting for the next Bad, Bad Thing to happen. Like someone trying to kill me—again.

Everyone at Mythos Academy knows me as Gwen Frost, the Gypsy girl who uses her psychometry magic to find lost objects—and who just may be dating Logan Quinn, the hottest guy in school. But I’m also the girl the Reapers of Chaos want dead in the worst way. The Reapers are the baddest of the bad, the people who murdered my mom. So why do they have it in for me?

It turns out my mom hid a powerful artifact called the Helheim Dagger before she died. Now, the Reapers will do anything to get it back. They think I know where the dagger is hidden, but this is one thing I can’t use my magic to find. All I do know is that the Reapers are coming for me—and I’m in for the fight of my life.

I saw a contest for DARK FROST I think on Shelf Awareness for Pros and wanted to read this even though I hadn’t read the first two books in the series. Jennifer Estep was kind enough to e-mail me after I entered the contest and put me in touch with her publicist who sent me this ARC.

I wondered if I would know enough about what’s going on in general since I hadn’t read the first two books to enjoy this one. I am happy to say that Jennifer did an amazing job of sprinkling in enough backstory without drowning us in info dumps so I could understand how this plot fits into the overall series.

I enjoy boarding school stories and this was no exception. There’s a great balance of the issues of friendships and romance that normal teenagers experience and the more major plot issues of finding the Helheim Dagger before the Reapers do and use it to free Loki. Yeah, they’re the bad guys. 

Gwen is the Champion of Nike, the Goddess of Victory. Her magical power is psychometry, the power to know an object’s or person’s history by touching them. I really liked that her power is different from what I often see in paranormal/fantasies. All the kids in the school have different talents, like the ability to use any weapons even if not trained in them, being super quick, or having amazing healing powers. 

The plot is fast paced, starting out with an attack by the Reapers on Gwen and her friends while they are on a school trip to the Coliseum to study magical relics. There Gwen confronts a masked Reaper who is Loki’s champion. One of the mysteries for the reader and Gwen is figuring out who the reaper is.

The other mystery is finding the Helheim Dagger, which had been hidden by Gwen’s mother before the Reapers murdered her. So Gwen has even more incentive to try to find the Dagger.

It felt like Gwen really comes into her powers in this book. And she’s maybe a little too independent in wanting to find the Dagger on her own, which of course gets her in trouble. But it felt like a normal teenager reaction. Didn’t we all feel invincible at that age?

The secondary characters are very interesting and I would have liked to see more of them. Grandma Frost who is her rock and Daphne, her best friend going through her own challenges, are a few.

Logan is Gwen’s love interest and he has his own secrets he doesn’t want to share. This is a problem because of Gwen’s magical abilities if she touches him. Their relationship had started in the prior books but is still developing here. One of the things I liked is that the romance didn’t overtake the plot. And there’s no love triangle, which I’m getting tired of.

At the end of the book, Jennifer includes a Beyond The Story section which tells you about the school, the mythology behind all the magical powers, the significance of all the buildings at the school, and who the main characters are. This is really helpful for someone who hasn’t read the prior books or who needs a refresher on some of these things. 

I'm giving away my ARC of DARK FROST. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment by September 8th. I’ll announce the winner on September 10th. If your e-mail is not on Blogger, please list it in your comment. International entries are welcome.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. 

Here's what's coming up next.

Next Monday I'm interviewing debut author Meagan Spooner and giving away her awesome fantasy/dystopian book SKYLARK. It was so good that I stayed up way too late one weeknight finishing it and was SO tired at work the next day. But it was totally worth it. I know you'll love this book. 

Wednesday next week I'm participating in Patty Blount's blog tour and giving away a copy of SEND, a contemporary novel about bullying told from the perspective of the bully. It sounds really good and I'm excited to share it and Patty's guest post with you.

 On Tuesday Tips tomorrow, we have a special guest post by Royce Buckingham on how to decide on your next book with a giveaway of DEMONKEEPER, a  fun YA paranormal story written from the POV of a male character. Next Tuesday Richard Due will share self-publishing tips and a giveaway of a print version of his middle grade fantasy THE MOON COIN. I'm really excited to share this with you because it's gotten good reviews for the story and the illustrations by Carolyn Arcabascio. I'm hoping some of you and your middle grade kids would enjoy his book.

And don't forget Casey's Thursday agent spotlights.

Hope to see you tomorrow!