I
was very excited and grateful to be sent a copy of Daniela's first novel for
teens. I had read and adored Daniela's first book a novel for adults, a
wonderful romantic story set in the Scottish highlands called Watch Over Me, it
was one of the fiction highlights of 2011. So I had a certain amount of
expectation with this novel and I wasn't disappointed. The book opens as
Sarah's parents are lowered into the ground, all the certainties of her world
have come crashing down. Sarah Midnight is a wonderful creation; frightened,
vulnerable and very believable she is also the calm centre of the supernatural
storm raging around her. With her parents dead she must continue their work as
a demon hunter and come to terms with the fact that they have not trained her to
survive the danger that this entails. While Sarah battles demons using the
blackwater which she draws from the earth and channels to banish them, she must
also wage nightly battles as her dreams offer guidance and foretell the dangers
to come. It's no wonder she's tired and on top of that she has to go to school,
practise her cello and she suffers from OCD. Her long lost cousin Harry arrives
and becomes her protector but Sarah cannot be sure if she should trust him. She
is tormented by strange and confusing dreams and as demons begin to attack her
and Harry it seems there are many more secrets in the Midnight family which
Sarah has yet to learn. Daniela Sacerdoti is a talented intelligent writer who
creates great fully rounded characters. She avoids the clichés of the YA
paranormal genre and instead creates her own mythology and builds an utterly
believable world in which her characters relationships feel genuine and warm. I
loved reading this book, as the two young people come to depend on each other
and their relationship grows you cannot help rooting for them, of course
this is the first of a trilogy so the book ends although the story does not and
the twist at the end of this first instalment leaves the reader hungry for
more.
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