Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

Maybe you have to know about your past to look to your future, to make a decision about it.

[Click here to see my review of book 1: Sisters Red and book 2: Sweetly.]

After absolutely falling in love with the first two books in Jackson Pearce's Fairytale Retellings series, I was admittedly a little scared to read the third. What if I didn't like it? What if it didn't live up to the greatness of the first two? I had the utmost faith in the fact that she could make this one just as good as her first two, but what if she hadn't?

Well, my fears were totally unfounded. Fathomless turned out to be just as beautifully written and compelling as its counterparts. I'm already itching to get my hands on Cold Spell, the fourth book, which doesn't come out until November of this year. How will I ever manage to wait that long?

Celia, Anne, and Jane Reynolds are a set of triplets with surprising powers. Anne can see the future, Jane can see the present, and Celia sees only the past. The youngest in their family, they were sent off to boarding school after the death of their mother. Since then, they've really only had each other, having lost contact with each of their brothers and the father who no longer remembers them (due to his Alzheimer's). They've always known that they're stronger together, but lately Celia has been feeling more and more like she is the odd one out. It's Jane and Anne who are the identical ones. She's just the one that somehow got thrown into the mix to complete the set. She believes that her power is useless, that her siblings received the ones that they could do something with whiles she only gets memories, but that's before she meets Lo.

Lo is an ocean girl. She used to be human, but now she lives under the water with her sisters, other ocean girls who have forgotten their pasts and bide their time until the day the angels who brought them here pluck them out of the sea and take them away to be with them. When they first arrive, though, many of the girls just want to go back. They want to be human again. According to the legends of the old ones, there's only one way to do that: they must get a human to love them and then drown them, taking the human's soul for their own.

When Jude, a hapless musician falls into the ocean one night, Lo decides that she doesn't want him to drown. She has tried drowning a boy to restore her soul and knows it won't work. Instead, she fights her sisters to save him, bringing him back to the shore with Celia's help. Celia touches Lo and discovers her real name, the one she forgot. This awakens a longing within Lo to remember what she was before she was an ocean girl.

Celia agrees to help her recover her memories and suddenly feels like her power has a purpose--that it can finally help someone. But this tentative friendship she's made is fraught with dangers and Jude may not be the only one in danger of drowning now.

In Fathomless, Pearce once again proves that she has an imagination of gold. And she has certainly struck gold with this series of retellings. I cannot express enough how much I adore this beautiful series and everything in it. Filled to the brim with the same strong bonds I have admired in the beginning, as well as another great dose of the magical and mythical beings we've seen in the first two novels, these books are positively addicting and the kind you'll want to pester everyone you know to read so they can enjoy it just as much as you did.

What are you waiting for? Go get this book immediately! Get the whole series! And pray the Jackson Pearce never ever stops writing.

Rating: ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~

"Because there's nothing there. There's no future between you and the girl--the water girl. Naida. Whatever she is."
"We stop being friends-" 
"You're not listening," Anne snaps, and there's so much worry in her voice that I feel cold. "There's nothing there, Celia. There's no future because there's no 'you and her.' It's blank."
"What does that mean?" 
Anne sighs, shakes her head. "What have you gotten yourself into?" she mutters before looking me in the eye. "It means," she says, voice serious, "either she dies or you do." 

Sweetly by Jackson Pearce

She dared to glance back. 

Yellow, sick-looking eyes found hers. 

She turned forward and sped up, faster than the others, driven by the yellow eyes that overpowered the sharp aches in her chest, her legs begging for rest. There was light ahead, shapes that weren't trees. Their house, their house was close--the candy trail had worked. She couldn't feel her feet anymore, her lungs were bursting, eyes watering, cheeks scratched, but there was the house.

They burst from the woods onto their cool lawn. Get inside, get inside. Ansel flung the back door open and they stumbled in, slamming the door shut. Their father and mother ran down the stairs, saw their children sweaty and panting and quivering, and asked in panicky, perfect unison:

"Where's your sister?"

[Click here for my review of book 1: Sisters Red]

The sequel to Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, Sweetly is the story of Gretchen and Ansel,  a brother and sister duo who leave their home in Washington to find a new one where they no longer live under the shadow of the sister they lost, Gretchen's twin. Still feeling the ache of her disappearance and the deaths of their parents, they are driven out by their surviving stepmother and drive straight to North Carolina. Gretchen hopes to escape the fear of vanishing the way her sister did by going to live on the beach, far away from the trees and forests that have surrounded her since she was a child, a constant reminder of what she lost and how she lost her to the witch in the woods.

Before they can make it to the beach, though, their car breaks down  and they are forced to seek help in the the small town of Live Oak. They take refuge in the home of Sofia Kelly, a chocolatier living just outside town. The twins and Sofia hit it off immediately, but most people in Live Oak hate Sofia just as much as they hate strangers, if not more. Most are either convinced she's an angel or a devil in disguise. Immediately, Gretchen and Ansel stand beside Sofia's claim of innocence in the part of the girls who have gone missing in from the town, both knowing first-hand what it's like to be blamed for the disappearance of another. But when Gretchen meets Samuel, she begins to question Sofia's side of the story as well as the secrets that seem to surround her.

As she learns more about the town's past and the witch who took her sister, Gretchen learns that the witch is back . . . and this time, it's after her.

I didn't think it was possible for Pearce to make a book that was just as good as the first in the Fairytale Retellings series, but she has definitely managed to pull that off without a hitch. Sweetly is filled with just as memorable characters and strong bonds as the first book and a plot that keeps you guessing until the end. As I've mentioned before, I'm a major sucker for loyalty and relationships where every person would be willing to lay down their life fore the next at a moment's notice and this book had both of those; not to mention, incredible fight scenes. All that, and the more intense scenes still had me biting my nails and even actually yelling during one particularly frightening bit.

This series is looking like it will turn out to be an all-time favorite of mine and I can't wait to see where it goes next, as well as where it will culminate in the end. It's going to be an epic collection and you absolutely don't want to miss it. I suggest you get started reading it right away. In the meantime, I'll be scouring the internet for book three.

Rating: ~ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ~

"Poor Sophia," Ansel says, shaking his head. I can hear it in his voice--he wants to save Sophia. That's how Ansel works. Someone is in pain, and he wants to save her--he ran back into the woods after our sister, he became my rock. He didn't give up on our father, even when Dad became someone Ansel and I barely knew--it wasn't long after Mom's death that he started drinking, and once he remarried it got worse. He couldn't escape the guilt--over my sister, over my mother. . . Guilt ate him through the mouth of the bottle. 

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

"You watch yourself. One day you're gonna pick a hole in the sky and the universe is gonna fall right through. Then we'll all be in a fix."

I've been interested in reading Beautiful Creatures ever since I saw Margaret Stohl at LeakyCon, thought she was pretty cool, and started following her on Twitter. The last action further encouraged me to read the book after constantly being bombarded by news about the book and its movie adaptation that will be hitting theaters in February.

So I finally got around to picking the book up at the library and started reading it as soon as I got the chance. It was wonderful. A rich and well-written story, Beautiful Creatures is more than worthy of all the attention it's getting right about now. In fact, I think it deserves a little more.

Nearly every night, Ethan Wate has the same nightmare. The particulars may be different, but each one involves him doing everything in his power to save a girl he deeply loves and each ends with her slipping through his fingers as his heart shatters. He does his best to convince himself that these dreams are of no consequence, even as he wakes up covered in mud or dripping from water and with the smell of rosemary and lemons in his nostrils. When the girl from his dreams ends up being in his class on the first day of school, though, Ethan is no longer able to fool himself.

Lena Duchanne (pronounced doo-cain) immediately attracts the attention of the entire town of Gatlin. The small, southern town is wary of outsiders and those who are different. Not only does Lena look and act different than any of the other girls in Jackson High School, but strange things keep happening around her and it's not long before it is discovered that she's also the niece of Macon Ravenwood, the town's local shut-in.

But Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her. She's different and that's intoxicating to him, but it's more than that. They share a connection that no one, not even she, can explain and Ethan soon finds himself willing to put everything on the line to protect and love this strange girl.

However, things are more complicated than they seem. A heavy cloud hangs over Lena and it takes more than a little coaxing before he learns why. Lena is a Caster (generally considered a sort of witch, though most Casters hate being called such) and her sixteenth birthday is rapidly approaching. For most Casters, their sixteenth birthday is the day they choose whether to be a Dark or Light Caster, but in the Duchanne/Ravenwood family, a curse takes the choice out of their hands. They don't get to choose. A path is decided for them.

Lena, fearful of what she may become, does her best to push Ethan away, but he might be just what she needs to keep her from losing everything she is. One way or another, each new day brings her birthday closer and Ethan is determined to do whatever it takes to keep Lena from slipping through his fingers.

With masterful dialogue and memorable characters, Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia spin an excellent tale filled with love, magic, fear, and darkness. The pages are rich with wonderful storytelling and keeps the reader hooked from beginning to end and longing for more even after one has reached the final page. Each character was well-rounded and interesting, each scene executed with precision and finesse.

This book was excellent and I cannot wait to read it's three successors. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read that's dark and beautiful all at once, filled with fantasy and eerie delight. It was just spooky enough to keep me enthralled without discouraging my interest. I can't wait to see what these lovely ladies come up with next.

Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I don't know what I was expecting, but if I had learned anything about Lena by now, it was to expect the unexpected and proceed with caution.