The Summoning

Description:
My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.
All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don't even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost—and the ghost saw me.
Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won't leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a "special home" for troubled teens. Yet the home isn't what it seems. Don't tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It's up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House . . . before its skeletons come back to haunt me.
 HarperTeen • Trade Paper • March 2009 • ISBN: 0061450545


My Take:
When I heard that Kelly Armstrong, one of my favourite authors, had come out with a Young Adult/Teen Fiction Novel I admit I was wary. After a few bad experiences with YA novels I wasn't sure what to expect from Ms. Armstrong's newest venture but I have to say I'm very pleasantly surprised. The Summoning is the first book in the Darkest Powers series which is the YA sister series to her Otherworld Series.

I found that the characters are very well developed and very believable. The relationships between the characters are also quite believable and there is just a touch of (appropriate) sexual tension that had me sighing in remembrance of my own teen-hood sexual angst.

And then of course there was the delicious paranormal drama: young paranormal powerhouses just coming into their powers! The story is Chock-full of witches, sorcerers, necromancers, demons, ghosts and of course werewolves (OH MY!).

All in all this was a very well written book that had me emotionally invested in the story almost immediately. I read it in one sitting because I couldn't put it down and I ran out to the get the second book the first thing in the morning (which, I'm happy to report, was even better than the first).

"But wait!" you say. "Are there any downsides? This review is just too positive to believe!" Well, actually I have only one minor thing that's bugging me: because its a YA novel I don't see any steamy sex scenes in its future. Now before you go rolling your eyes there is a reason I say this. The books start setting up attractions and even oh so mild partial nudity that you want the relationships to grow into their natural (steamy) conclusions (I'm betting you were no saint as a teen either, none of us were). But I will just wait and see where the story goes.

Final Word: I would definitely recommend this book for teen and adult readers alike.

Where to buy:
All the books I review and more can be found in The Mystic Bookkeeper's Emporium. You can also find them on Chapters , Barnes and Noble and Amazon .