This trilogy landed fifteen years ago, and many book lovers now fondly recall these novels as part of their childhood awakening into fantasy and dark magic. But have they held their appeal?
The set up is fantastic. Chloe, small, undersized, mostly ignored by peers and family alike, starts seeing dead people. (Hush, The Sixth Sense was all the rage back then.) She is moved to a home for troubled teens. Are she and the others “troubled”, going insane? Or is Chloe really a necromancer, surrounded by witches, sorcerers and werewolves?
Re-reading this series I remembered what drew me in the first place – excellent characters, great writing and the author has a knack for capturing the chaotic undertone of teen relationships. These books are focused on personalities, rather than the plot – people move here and there and react dramatically, but the overarching narrative was vague.
If you have a thing for werewolves you won’t care too much though. In the eternal plotting vs pantsing debate, I would argue most stories end up stronger with a little bit of plotting. Read this series when the world is pissing you off and you’d feel better to see a few angry corpses staggering around.