Book Review: The Ghosts of Aquinnah by Julie Flanders

Title: The Ghost of Aquinnah
Author: Julie Flanders
Publisher: Ink Smith Publishing (December 5, 2013)
Genre: Paranormal

Format Read: Ebook ARC
Length: Novel
Source: Author

A brilliant flash of light transcends through time.

Another freezes a cloaked figure within a frame of salty mist as waves crash against a rocky shore. Her harrowing expression shadows the beacon to a pinprick.

By the next blaze, she is gone. Only the lighthouse remains.

Hannah’s eyes blink in step with each heartbeat. Images of her deceased parents and Martha’s Vineyard explode like firecrackers inside her mind.

She shakes her head.

For weeks this eerie woman dressed in nineteenth century garb has been haunting my webcam, but tonight she stared into my soul.

Why? ...

Who is she? ...

Casting aside months of research on historic lighthouses, Hannah drives to the coast and boards a ferry.

What is the strange connection she has to this mysterious woman suspended in time?

Hannah finds out.

But, it’s not at all what she expects ...

Hannah unravels a century old murder.

Teaser: It was almost as if he could see her spirit dripping out from her body and collecting in a puddle at her feet. [27% Ebook ARC. Loved this imagery.]

Review: A woman on a mission, Hannah seeks the mysterious woman who haunts a lighthouse in Aquinnah in Julie Flanders’ The Ghosts of Aquinnah.

This novel jumps between current time (2013) and historical Martha’s Vineyard (1884). The mysterious woman Hannah sees upon a webcam one night pulls the reader into the tale of Christopher, a shipwrecked young Irishman, and Stella, a young woman married to a man she doesn’t love. My heart ached for Christopher and Stella and the conflict of their budding feelings of love. At times the parts with Stella reminded me of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Josiah, Stella’s husband and the town doctor, played the perfect villain, although one a reader could sympathize with as well.

I wish we saw more of Hannah in 2013 Martha’s Vineyard and New England. The novel veered more on Christopher and Stella’s side, but I felt a connection with Hannah and had hoped to delve deeper into her life and conflicts. Her part of the story almost felt a touch anti-climactic compared to Christopher and Stella’s.

I loved the settings within this novel and how they can be beautiful with the lighthouses, greenery, and ocean waves as well as mysterious and downright creepy with the thick fog and chilly atmosphere. Flanders’ writing captured the world and the timelines of the story.

Touching and tragic, The Ghosts of Aquinnah by Julie Flanders will stick with you.

Four Bookworms = I really liked it!

N is for The 19th Year series by Emi Gayle

 

For 2013's Ato Z Challenge, I am talking about book series, particularly some favorite series as well as series I've been waiting to read for a LONG time. 

N is for ... The 19th Year series by Emi Gayle

Emi Gayle's The 19th Year series is a refreshing take on the paranormal genre. Mac is a changeling and must choose a paranormal form by the time she turns nineteen. Her human boyfriend, however, hopes she'll choose to remain human. It's such a fun series.

What eighteen year old Mac Thorne doesn't know will probably kill her. In exactly eight months, five days, three hours and thirteen minutes, Mac has to choose what she'll be for the rest of her life. She has no choice but to pick. As a Changeling, it's her birthright. To Mac, it's a birthchore. Like going to school with humans, interacting with humans, and pretending to be human during the pesky daylight hours. Once darkness descends, Mac can change into any supernatural form that exists-which makes her as happy as she can be. That is, until Winn Thomas, the biggest geek in her senior class, figures out there's more to what hides in the dark than most are willing to acknowledge. In this first of the 19th Year Trilogy, Winn might know more about Mac than even she does, and that knowledge could end their lives, unless Mac ensures the powers-that-be have no choice but to keep him around.

Click here to read my review of After Dark.

Demon crypts. Vampire lairs. Glowing angels. Sexy sirens. The stuff of fiction.

Or so Winn Thomas always thought.

Since being accepted into the fold of the supernatural, he knows better. None of what he imagined is true, but everything he feared is, and binding himself to his Changeling girlfriend until her nineteenth birthday will give him an education far beyond what he’d get at his human high school.

Luckily, Winn’s not giving up, he won’t back down, and he definitely isn’t going to run away with his tail between his legs. After all, only werewolves have tails. Right?

In this, the second of the 19th Year trilogy, Winn’s facing the challenge of one lifetime. If he doesn’t learn the truth about mythological creatures, his girlfriend Mac Thorne won’t either. That means, in six months, when she chooses her final form, she won’t know what to pick.

Winn, though, has his own ideas about Mac’s final selection—plans she knows nothing of.

He intends to have her pick human.

Whether she can or not.

J is for Just Breathe by Kendall Grey

 

For 2013's A to Z Challenge, I am talking about book series, particularly some favorite series as well as series I've been waiting to read for a LONG time.

 

J is for ... Just Breathe by Kendall Grey

I had the fortune to win a signed paperback copy of Inhale by Kendall Grey. This book is book one of the Just Breathe series. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I look forward to reading these books.

Strangers in reality, inseparable in dreams…

After years of suffocating under her boss’s scrutiny, whale biologist Zoe Morgan finally lands a job as director of a tagging project in Hervey Bay, Australia. Success Down Under all but guarantees her the promotion of a lifetime, and Zoe won’t let anything—or anyone—stand in her way. Not the whale voices she suddenly hears in her head, not the ex who won’t take no for an answer, and especially not the gorgeous figment of her imagination who keeps saving her from the fiery hell of her dreams.

Gavin Cassidy hasn’t been called to help a human Wyldling in over a year, which is fine by him. Still blaming himself for the death of his partner, he keeps the guilt at bay by indulging in every excess his rock star persona affords. That is, until he’s summoned to protect Zoe from hungry Fyre Elementals and learns his new charge is the key to restoring order in the dying Dreaming. He never expects to fall for the feisty Dr. Morgan…nor does he realize he may have to sacrifice the woman he loves to save an entire country.

Her dreams brought them together, but reality could tear them apart…

The man of Zoe Morgan’s dreams isn’t only real, he’s interested. In her. But her boss wants her too, and is leveraging his unsolicited advances with the threat of blocking the huge promotion she's after. When he places a spy on her research team, the intense stranger discovers more than he should, and Zoe fears hiding a relationship with Gavin Cassidy from her boss is the least of her worries. The whale she must protect has been marked for death, and Zoe's old enemy Scarlet is eager to deliver the killing blow. To both of them.

Australia’s Sentinels must find and lock the door into the Dreaming before Fyre Elementals launch another attack on innocent dreamers. But corruption and distrust abound, and Gavin believes someone on the Sentinel council is in league with the Fyres. As he reluctantly embraces his new role as council leader, Gavin must not only keep Zoe safe from Scarlet's vengeful clutches, but organize a Sentinel defense strong enough to prevent a full-blown Elemental war—with a traitor fighting by his side.

He made a deal with the devil to save the woman he loves…

After tragedy rocks the foundation of their relationship, Australian Sentinel Gavin Cassidy and whale biologist Zoe Morgan call it quits. Gavin can’t forgive himself for shattering her trust, and being with the sexy rock star is killing Zoe. Literally.

But love—and duty—are powerful motivators, and alliances are forged in the most unlikely places. With the key to salvation locked inside the mind of an unconscious child, Gavin must find another way to snuff out the Fyre Elementals before millions of humans die, or make good on his deal with the devil and lose the one he loves. Again.  

Waiting on Wednesday: POLAR NIGHT by Julie Flanders

“Waiting On” Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.

Polar Night
By Julie Flanders
Publication Date: February 7, 2013

From Goodreads:

When Detective Danny Fitzpatrick leaves his hometown of Chicago and moves to Fairbanks, Alaska he wants nothing more than to escape the violence and heartbreak that left his life in pieces. Numbed by alcohol and the frozen temperatures of an Alaskan winter, Danny is content with a dead-end job investigating Fairbanks' cold cases. That all changes when a pretty blond woman goes missing on the winter solstice, and Danny stumbles upon some surprising connections between her disappearance and that of another Fairbanks woman three years earlier. Forced out of his lethargy, Danny sets out to both find the missing woman and solve his own cold case.

The investigation points Danny towards Aleksei Nechayev, the handsome and charming proprietor of an old asylum turned haunted tourist attraction in the Arctic town of Coldfoot. As he tries to find a link between Nechayev and his case, Danny's instinct tells him that Nechayev is much more than what he seems.

Danny has no idea that Nechayev is hiding a secret that is much more horrifying than anything he could ever have imagined. As his obsession with finding the missing women grows, Danny finds his own life in danger. And when the truth is finally revealed, the world as he knows it will never be the same.

I'm so excited about Julie Flanders' debut novel Polar Night! I've been following her blog for a while, and her book sounds so good. I love a good mystery, and this sounds like one.

What's your "waiting on" pick?