I am in love with the cover. I must admit that I first picked it up because of the beautiful cover and when I read the summary I knew that I would like the world the author Jennifer Lynn Barnes offers with her book. I was pulled in the world Kali lives in quite quickly and easily. Right from the start there is a fight going on with hellhounds, although all in all there are not that much fighting scenes where Kali shows off her skills, nevertheless I did not get disappointed with the story.
As for the main characters of the book (Kali, Skylar and Bethany) I liked the protagonist Kali the most, but Skylar’s character drawing was as interesting as Kali’s. Kali has one day supernatural powers and the next day she’s a mere human, that was a nice twist from the supernatural scene. Skylar says of herself that she’s a bit of a psychic. Bethany is one of the popular ones in her highschool, not a character that I liked from the start but she developed nicely in the plot.
The world we find ourselves in is a world where Darwin had discovered a selection of unnatural creatures (like hellhounds, dragons, vampires and zombies) . Their existence has been announced to the population and hunting them is forbidden. Still Kali is hunting them at night when she is in the supernatural mode. She can fight with any weapon and when she picks up a weapon she instantly knows how to use it even if she had used it never before in her life. Cool!
One day in her highschool she finds out that Bethany has a death mark on her body. She decides to rescue her although she is at this day in her human form and therefore weak and vulnerable.
I really liked their progress in the story. I enjoyed that they encountered more than one species along their journey. At times I wished to hear the voice of Lev more often. I liked him.
There is one thing I could not wrap my mind around, it’s a conversation between Kali and her mother where the mother explains that the creatures are from a parallel universe and are stranded permanently on earth. In my opinion, thus adds no depth to the (standalone) book and could have been left out. It would have been more reasonable when the book was meant for a series, the plot could have been enhanced in that direction.
I had overall a good time with the book and enjoyed the world I was drawn in.
