17-year-old November Lonergan spent her whole life feeling like an outsider. She was right. She’s a reaper like her mother; like her two cousins, Kai and Tristin. The supernatural world believes they are part of a prophecy to save them from an evil known as the Grove. Ember just wants to survive high school and fix the fallout from bringing back her friend.
Old enemies are lurking; waiting for their opportunity to strike but the pack has a new problem. A group of legendary hunters has resurfaced, threatening the reapers and anybody who stands with them. They are making good on their threats too; attacking those closest to the pack.
Their only hope of defeating the Legionaries involves trusting a stranger to perform a dangerous spell to advance Ember and her cousin’s powers. But Ember has a secret; a secret she can’t tell the pack. One that leaves the pack vulnerable.
An attack on pack allies, leaves one member of the group injured and another missing, along with a mysterious girl named Evangeline who may play a bigger part in this than any of them realize. As the Legionaries are closing in, the pack must trust their enemies, enter hostile territories, and play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a psychopath. Their entire plan lynches on a dangerous bargain, but rescuing one member of the pack could mean losing another in their place…possibly forever.
It’s amazing when an author can continue a story and make it just as great, if not better, than the first. Martina, my hat’s off to you! After reading the first I just had to know what happened. I didn’t realize how addicting this story was until I finished the first… and the second…then had nowhere to go (bring on book 3!). This story is still witty and funny but, as the title indicates, it is dark. I felt like it’s about finding a way to fight the monsters you can’t see. Ember and the crew have experienced it all. Knife fights, blood rituals, and deaths. Or at least they thought they did. Then you throw a prophecy in the midst of the craziness and all the freaks come out! While Ember and her cousins are trying to figure out what exactly they are themselves and how to harness their power, they now have to prepare for a war that they didn’t realize they were part of. It seems all they can get is a bunch of half-truths, but in true paranormal fashion the fight is on! And of course we have some new characters! It’s very Mace-centric! In the first book Mace is our resident bad guy, but kinda good, maybe, lol! But he is also very mysterious and we never really get a good look at what happened to him or what his story was. Well he is the bad guy I just had to know more about. Thank the gods Martina gives us his backstory! It explains soooo much about him. And Silas, well he is very special, the kind you love to hate to love. He is a new constant in the story that will keep you trying to figure out his angle. As with the first story this one is very intense but it is darker. It is nail biting, keep you on the edge of your seat, suspenseful reading. I can’t say much about what happens because there are so many twists and turns and I don’t want to give anything away. Absolute intense sequel and soooooo good! Definite must read! I can’t wait for the next!
Martina McAtee is a USA Today Bestselling author and the winner of the 2016 Reader’s Favorite Gold Medal for her first book, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. She lives in Jupiter, Florida with her teenage daughters, her best friend, two attack Chihuahuas, and two shady looking cats. By day she is a registered nurse, but by night she writes young adult books about reapers, zombies, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures. She wrote her first story when she was five with an orange crayon on a legal pad she stole from her mom’s office. She’s been writing ever since.
Her influences include Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, Joss Whedon, L.J. Smith, and even J.K. Rowling. Living in South Florida provides her with plenty of material for the weird worlds she writes about. When she isn’t working, teaching, or writing, she’s reading or watching shows involving reapers, zombies, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures.
Her novels, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Dark Dreams and Dead Things are on sale now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books A Million. Her third book, Loving You with Teeth and Claws, a Dead Things Prequel, is due out in April, 2017. She is currently working on the fourth book in the ‘Dead Things’ series, Sinister Souls and Dead Things due to release in Summer of 2017.
