Fractured Light Blog Tour: review and giveaway

This Saturday we are featuring a YA Cover Reveal and this YA paranormal fantasy tour. We welcome everyone to our stop on the Fractured Light Blog Tour presented by AToMR Book Blog Tours. There's info on the book and author, our review, a huge giveaway to enter and links to all of the blogs involved in the tour. We thank you for stopping by.

Blurb: I’m dying, I thought. This was unexpected and not at all how I envisioned my death. I was supposed to die gardening in a flowerbed as a hundred-year-old woman, not as a seventeen-year-old trapped in a lake beneath inches of ice.

Llona Reese is used to living on the run. After the Vykens killed her parents, she knew they would eventually come for her too. She can’t take any chances. But when she starts to make friends for the first time in her life, she gets careless and lets her guard down. Big mistake.

As an Aura, Llona can manipulate light and harness its energy. But if she wants to survive, Llona will have to defy the Auran Council and learn to use her power as a weapon against the Vyken whose sole desire is to take her light. Now she’s caught in something even bigger than she can understand, with a power she can’t wield, and no one she can trust, except, just maybe, a mysterious stranger.

In this breathtaking and romantic adventure, Rachel McClellan delivers a truly mesmerizing story that will keep you guessing to the very end. 

Purchase links: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble ***For one week only, the ebook of Fractured Light will be .99!***

About Rachel McClellan: My YA urban fantasy novel FRACTURED LIGHT was just released. The sequel is tentatively planned for release in February 2013.

I've been drunk on writing ever since I traveled to Ireland and became blessed (or cursed) by a Leprechaun with a french accent and a bad attitude. Of course I did just steal his gold, but that's another story.

I currently live in Maine and find the place terribly and hauntingly romantic. Love the forests and graveyards. 

Author links: Website | Facebook | Twitter

Review:

Llona is my favorite type of heroine to root for. She's wildly independent to a fault (like Vampire Academy's Rose and countless others on my Top 10 list), kind of clueless about her power, is a loner, and grows comfortable with herself as time passes by. Llona's voice immediately drew me in with her snark and sense of humor. The paranormal lore and world McClellan created was refreshingly different--a world of Auras having the power of the Light hidden in female DNA to protect themselves from the evil Vykens who seek to suck their ability out of their bodies.

At first I thought the story was going to be another predictable YA about an orphaned teen girl learning about her power, then finding herself involved in a triangle. That is not what I found on the stories' three hundred+ pages. Llona's story was involving. There was a well written cast of characters from her Uncle Jake to closest friend, May, to nice guy Christian and reliable bud, Matt. The pacing kept me fully invested and wondering what would occur next. 

Watching Llona trust others and socialize, question the Council and her Aunt Sophie, as well as fighting for her independence by putting off her attending Lucent Academy, made this seventeen year old real to me. I did get frustrated with her decisions at times and yet it was her decisions which made her even more appealing since she was merely acting her age and behaving accordingly to her habitual closed-off-from-the-outside-world existence. In order to stay alive and off the radar of the Vyken who took her mother's life, Llona had to keep her distance from others. This time things changed--for the first time, in this town and at this school, she wanted more. She wanted to play sports. She wanted to get involved. She simply wanted to belong. 

There was plenty of action from bridge jumps to falls in icy ponds. Even if I figured out early on the identity of the protagonist, seeing Llona and Christian trying to solve the mystery was interesting.  Forbidden attractions, first love, friendship, learning from the past to secure a future, questioning authority and learning there's nothing wrong with being different, Fractured Light thoroughly entertained me and left me wanting the next book, Fractured Truth.

Rating: 4

Cover comment: Ethereal, haunting, and very pretty. The girl looks like Llona and I like the light pouring from her hands.

Book source: I received an eARC from the author in return for my honest review during a book tour.

Giveaway:

This giveaway is open tour-wide. The author is offering winners 3 necklaces, 5 signed copies of Fractured Light and 10 eBooks. These prizes are open internationally.

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