Beautifully Broken by Sherry Soule (VO)

Spellbound, Book 1

Synopsis : They say every town has its secrets, but that doesn’t even begin to describe Whispering Pines. The townsfolk are a superstitious lot and the mystical disappearance of a local teen has everyone murmuring about a centuries old witch’s curse.

Sixteen-year-old Shiloh Ravenwolf is a heritage witch from the Broussard family, a family both destined and cursed. When she takes a summer job at Ravenhurst Manor, she discovers a ghost with an agenda. That’s where she meets the new town hottie, Trent Donovan, and immediately becomes spellbound by his charms.

Finally, Shiloh’s met someone who is supercute and totally into her, but Trent may be the next victim on the supernatural hit list. And Shiloh is the only person with the power to save him. It sucks to have a destiny, especially since Shiloh would rather spend her summer being a normal girl who worries about clothes and boys, not the supernatural. But she’s never been normal and the stranger things become the more her own magical senses awaken. Complicated much?

With cryptic messages from a pesky ghost, she will begin to understand the mysterious significance of the strange mark branded on her wrist, and decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to protect the other teenagers in town.

Unfortunately, for Shiloh, not all ghosts want help crossing over. Some want vengeance.

Review : When I started this book, It sounds pretty familiar to me. The beginning looks a lot like Vampire Kisses : a weird girl who doesn’t have any friends, who wears different clothes. A lot of persons think she is very weird et don’t want to be closed to her. But everything will change when a new boy and his father move in the old manor in town. A manor that everyone thinks haunted since a murder happened. And like in Vampire Kisses, these two young persons will be drawn together by an invisible bound. Here it is for the similarities. We must wait some chapters to understand that finally this story is really different.

Shiloh is a witch family descendant, so she has a lot of power even if she doesn’t even know it. The only big problem, is that the ghosts are always near her, and they just want to ruin her life. But if only it was just that… She is persecuted by a demon who wants to get her soul and the other children’s in town whereas she doesn’t know why. Even if she is a mad girl for everyone, our heroine can’t let that happens and she will decide to interefere in the demon’s plan.

The story is quite simple and banal but we are still surprised by some details. It’s a first book pleasant to read but it wasn’t amazing. However I’m quite curious to see how will evolve Shiloh and the consequences about what her mother has done.