Rose Frost has had a difficult childhood moving from place to place due to the demands of her father’s job – and it has only been exacerbated by her odd gift, a gift she doesn’t understand and has scared her in the past.Her father’s job has now lead her to live with her grandmother, Daisy, while her family move abroad. Long estranged from the family, Rose remembers little about Daisy’s home in Warminster, Wiltshire but quickly re-establishes the few old friends she has in the areaBut people are going missing in mysterious ways and there are definitely secrets being kept in the town. Not least of which the mystery of Halika Dacome, goddess, saviour, perhaps even devil who is constantly referred to – and who haunts Rose’s dreams and may be the key to everything – her gift, her family’s secrets and the enemy that is hunting her.This book is probably a decent prologue for the series. I now know who everyone is, what everyone does, I have the world building, the concepts, the relationships, the setting – I have all the information for the whole book series now.But it’s a long prologue and I kind of wanted to read a book, not a prequel for an actual story. I think this book can be split into 3 parts. In the first, we have a brief introduction where we’re introduced to the idea that Halika Dacome is going to be reincarnated into a young girl’s body and that there’s a bad guy who wants to kill her and he has a grandson who’s not exactly on board for this plan.Then the bulk of the plot where we follow Rose who is 16 and has an odd gift and lots of hints about someone called Halika Dacome. And there’s a boy who is attracted to her but everyone says is a wrong ‘un and he has an evil grandfather. I felt a little like I was given the answers and then was asked the question – but everyone was acting like the question should be a great mystery.It doesn’t help that for the majority of the book she never explores this power. She uses it to find a mysterious box she doesn’t open (I’m still not sure what this box is for?) and she uses it to make herself warm when she’s cold, even when someone is found well and truly mangled and tortured she doesn’t use her ability to heal. The result of that is that for, maybe, 75% of the book we have a paranormal novel with precious little of the paranormal – it’s a mystery, it could be a famous five book.And the mystery kind of lost me as well. People are going missing and, since one of them is the father of a boy who is the friend of Rose’s friend, the plucky teens decide to investigate in between going to coffee shops, going to picnics, meeting a bewildering array of people and getting odd shoe-horned in references to Halika Dacome inserted into the story but never really developed or revealing anything. At some point during the investigation they decide that the big bad guy is involved because… no-one likes him much? And then they’re interested in a ruined church and ley lines and gems and vacant property – and just a lot of info pushed in that is connected by vastly implausible leaps of logic. They don’t tell Daisy, Rose’s grandmother, she with all the answers because they don’t want to get her in trouble/don’t trust her/reasons?! Which ends up with both Rose and Daisy constantly telling each other “we need to talk about important things” (please god TALK ABOUT THEM!) and never actually doing so! Anything seems to take precedence to speaking with the woman who has all the answers – even when Rose is (or should be) blazingly furious with her.Read More
