Reviewer: Sandy
I received a review copy
Summary:
She tried to ignore them. But some things won’t be ignored.
Kat Preston doesn’t believe in ghosts. Not because she’s never seen one, but because she saw one too many. Refusing to believe is the only way to protect herself from the ghost that tried to steal her life. Kat’s disbelief keeps her safe until her junior year at McTernan Academy, when a research project for an eccentric teacher takes her to a tiny, private island off the coast of Connecticut.
The site of a grisly mystery, the Isle of Acacia is no place for a girl who ignores ghosts, but the ghosts leave Kat little choice. Accompanied by her research partner, Evan Kingsley, she investigates the disappearance of Cassie Mallory and Sebastian Radcliffe on their wedding night in 1886. Evan’s scientific approach to everything leaves Kat on her own to confront a host of unbelievables: ancestral curses, powerful spells, and her strange connection to the ghosts that haunt Castle Creighton.
But that’s all before Kat’s yanked through a magic portal and Evan follows her. When the two of them awaken 129 years in the past with their souls trapped inside the bodies of two wedding guests, everything changes. Together, Kat and Evan race to stop the wedding-night murders and find a way back to their own time—and their own bodies—before their souls slip away forever.
Review:
Kat believes that ghosts rely on certain humans for special matters and Kat was one of these individuals that these ghosts could call upon. From a small age, she saw these spirits but an event in her life causes her to become an unbeliever. Strange as that sounds, Kat had a mantra that she would recite to remind herself that these being were fictitious. Now with college looming over her head and needing an awesome grade, these past 8 years of silence are suddenly bringing the sprits back into Kat’s world. Her research paper on the Creighton Castle and the family’s curse pushes her deeper than she’s ever wanted to go and now there is no turning back. The bloody deaths of the newlyweds who were killed on their special night and the curse of the first-born sons are topics that are layered with history, a twisted plot, rich characters and magic. The tangled relations within the book made me chuckle: confusing at first, they later turned comical as they were played out and you got to know some of the characters. Kat becomes more personal to the ghosts than I think she ever imaged possible and I loved the confusion that this caused. A great rich storyline, that I loved, allows us to travel back in time to experience some of the events firsthand. The author keeps the story moving and moving it rather quickly. I did find it hard to believe that saying a mantra would make someone an unbeliever, why not hypnosis or mind-erasing? I also wasn’t too fond of the cover, I like the different fonts and the colors, I just didn’t like her eyeglasses and her hair. Picky, I know but it’s my own taste.
4 stars
