J R Smith

First in the Black Blood Legacies series, J.R. Smith’s Fate’s Crossing introduces a misfit student, heading for a special summer course and struggling against her attraction to “tall, dark, brooding, brilliant Sean.” The first person narration in this novel has a convincingly breathless wordiness that’s singularly appropriate to the character’s enthusiasms, even when the world around her is falling apart. But Liana has much to learn in this tale. There are prophecies, mysteries, show more a book with curiously ragged pages, and dangers aplenty on the everyday California streets, as Sean and Liana take classes together and Sean both hides and reveals the first small snippets of Liana’s secret. Meanwhile Liana remains convinced that “only someone like me could stumble into a situation that I knew nothing about whatsoever,” and “this situation was beginning to become more than I could take.” Fast-paced, wordy, pleasingly humorous and intriguing, Fate’s Crossing has the feel of a very present-day, earth-bound Shannara, with lots more to come.

Disclosure: I bought it when it was free, and I have a book with the same publisher show less