October #BookReviews for Magazines @FleetLife

Relentless is a YA paranormal fantasy and the first book in a series. It is primarily set in the small coastal town of New Hastings not too far from Portland in Maine, USA

Seventeen year old Sara Grey was orphaned ten years ago when her Dad was killed by a vampire. With a mother who left when she was just a small child, Sara is taken in by her wheelchair bound Uncle. She’s independent and quite a loner, she has no girlfriends, but several boys who are friends.

What she does have is plenty of friends who are animals and others who are from the supernatural world. One of her best friends is Remy a troll. We meet him when together they help save the life of a new born. Sara has healing abilities, but she is also aware of a beast-like creature which lies dormant within her.

School-friends Pete and Roland persuade Sara to go out and see a band with them in a club in Portland, that night she meets some very attractive men and in an ally later she has her first close encounter with vampires, werewolves and a hunter called a Mohiri.

Life for Sara and her friends changes that night as more than one person has an interest in her. But strong-willed and with her own agenda Sara is no push-over as danger is never far away and a prediction from a powerful African witch helps answer many questions.

I like immersing myself in YA paranormal fantasy and I’m glad this book took on it’s own storyline after the introduction of the popular vampire and werewolf storylines. The inclusion of many other supernatural creatures was a delight and I felt they all worked well together.

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Would You BUY or PASS? #FridayFiveChallenge – Relentless by Karen Lynch

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Rosie Amber

Welcome to my Friday Five Challenge

Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

In today’s online shopping age, readers often base their buying decisions from small postage stamp size book covers (Thumb-nails), a quick glance at the book description and the review. How much time do they really spend making that buying decision?

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

1) Go to any online book supplier,

2) Randomly choose a category,

3) Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,

4) Read the book Bio/ Description for this book,

5) If there are reviews, check out a couple,

6) Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?

Here goes… This week my chosen category is YOUNG ADULT FANTASY

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

This is a hugely competitive category and this book caught my eye because years a go I went to school with a girl who shares the author’s name.

Price; Free on kindle

Book Description

Sara Grey’s world shattered ten years ago when her father was brutally murdered. Now at seventeen, she is still haunted by memories of that day and driven by the need to understand why it happened. She lives a life full of secrets and her family and friends have no idea of the supernatural world she is immersed in or of Sara’s own very powerful gift.

In her quest for answers about her father’s death, Sara takes risks that expose her and her friends to danger and puts herself into the sights of a sadistic vampire. On the same fateful night she meets Nikolas, a warrior who turns Sara’s world upside down and is determined to protect her even if it’s the last thing she wants.

Sara’s life starts to spin out of control as she is hunted by an obsessed vampire, learns that her friends have secrets of their own and reels from the truth about her own ancestry. Sara has always been fiercely independent but in order to survive now she must open herself to others, to reveal her deepest secrets. And she must learn to trust the one person capable of breaking down the walls around her.

Number of pages; 288

Reviews; 107 on Amazon .co.uk and 731 on Amazon.com

Would I BUY or PASS?…… BUY

Analysis

The YA (Young Adult) market is huge, these are the booklovers of today and tomorrow and of years to come, so there is a huge choice of books with really eye catching covers and book titles to match. My choice was vast, this is one of my favourite categories at the moment so my hand was hovering over SO many books. In the end I let my inner child do the choosing and we chose a book by a “name” we knew from my childhood. No this isn’t the same person and I don’t think I’ve read any books by this author before.

So back to the book, the cover is dramatic and intriguing, the title easy to remember. It is book 1 so there may be a cliff hanger. The plot looked a popular mix of vampires and teenagers coming into their supernatural gifts, but hey it’s a popular theme.

I was stunned by the number of reviews this has especially from Amazon.com 557 of the 731 are 5* so it must be good.

If I wasn’t hovering over the BUY button already I certainly was when I saw it was for free – a good sales tactic for this market when you bring out more books in the series.

So there you are, it’s sitting on my kindle now awaiting review.

I’ll be back next week with another Friday Five Challenge, do feel free to join in.