January 1, 2018 / Leslie

First Book of the Year 2018

Happy New Year!

And welcome to First Book of the Year hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Join us as we kick off another year of great reading.

Second Book in a Supernatural Trilogy

This year’s choice is Crown of Stars, book two of a trilogy.

I’ve been having trouble focusing lately – even with books I should enjoy, I’m having trouble staying engaged – so I wanted to pick something I was pretty sure I could get into right away. The first book, Love is Red, was a creative, engaging mashu-up of genres I enjoy — murder mystery, suspenseful thriller, horror, fantasy, and the supernatural. Hopefully this one won’t suffer from “second book syndrome”.

Crown of Stars by Sophie Jaff

Rumors of witchcraft have haunted Margaret ever since she was born. A strange, dark-eyed child, she was feared and then shunned by her medieval English village after her mother’s brutal murder. When her father remarries, Margaret—now a young woman—realizes that she must leave the village for good.

Hundreds of years later, as fall comes to Manhattan, Katherine Emerson prays her horrific summer is over. She survived a killer’s attack, but her roommate Andrea was not so lucky and now Katherine is raising Andrea’s son, Lucas. However, the rest of her world is in ruins: the man she loves has left her and she’s pregnant with his child. She accepts she’ll be a single mother—until he insists on doing “the right thing”, which means taking her and Lucas with him to London for his new job. Katherine hopes that maybe she too can start over.

But starting over doesn’t mean that the disturbing and dangerous encounters with strangers will end. As Katherine begins to fall apart, Margaret’s fight to survive in a hostile world reveals she has inherited her mother’s extraordinary gifts—but will she use them for good or evil? Can Margaret change the destiny of Katherine and her unborn child? And what will happen if she succeeds?