Nightshade by A.K. Anderson

Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural, Young Adult

Pages: 233

Publishing date: August 16th 2016 by Kindle Press

When Iris is twelve years old, her mother is murdered. Six years later, the crime remains unsolved, and it’s the sudden death of her estranged grandmother – as well as Iris’s subsequent introduction to the prickly, yet entrancingly enigmatic Heathcliffe Monroe – that unlocks an even more complicated mystery. Between the lingering shadows of long-lost family secrets, and an overwhelming freefall into an entirely unexpected new world – the only guarantee that Iris has left is that there isn’t one.

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Iris has had an interesting upbringing, her mother was murdered when she was younger and she was kept away from her grandmother Kate without explanation why. Iris was raised by her father but when a mysterious guy named Heathcliff Monroe shows up things take a turn for the worse and Iris’ dad winds up dead. Iris soon discovers through Monroe that she is a witch with latent powers and witches are a rare thing in this book.

I enjoyed the premise of this book, a mystery within self-discovery, but I had a few issues with it. The prose in this book can be a little over the top in that it actually distracts from the story and is at times confusing because I don’t know where Iris’ mind is drifting. It takes it far away from the actual moment. There were times that I skimmed at least two paragraphs because I felt as though it had been a little too extreme by way of flowery words.

Some of the characters are a little over the top, too, but I did enjoy Iris, I also enjoyed Monroe and even Xavier. I would have liked to see more development in Iris but maybe that is to come with the next book.

The ending to this particular one left a lot of questions, and I’m still not entirely sure what I read. When the focus of the book was on the plot it was good, but when it began to become sidetracked with too many random inner musings/rantings it lost me.

I think it’s more of a 2.8 rating. I really wanted to like this book more than what I did, because the first two chapters sucked me in, but after that I felt pretty lost.