Into the Fire by Ashelyn Drake Pages: 258
Published by Month 9 Books on September 9, 2014
Genres: Love & Romance, Paranormal, Young Adult
Source: eARC from Publisher
Seventeen-year-old Cara Tillman’s life is a perfectly normal one until Logan Schmidt moves to Ashlan Falls. Cara is inexplicably drawn to him, but she’s not exactly complaining. Logan’s like no boy she’s ever met, and he brings out a side of Cara that she isn’t used to. As the two get closer, everything is nearly perfect, and Cara looks forward to the future.
But Cara isn’t a normal girl. She’s a member of a small group of people descended from the mythical phoenix bird, and her time is running out. Rebirth is nearing, which means she’ll forget her life up to this point—she’ll forget Logan and everything they mean to one another.. But that may be the least of Cara’s problems.
A phoenix hunter is on the loose, and he’s determined to put an end to the lives of people like Cara and her family, once and for all.
Into the Fire is the first in a new young adult paranormal romance series written by Kelly Hashway writing as Ashelyn Drake. Kelly wrote a really nice note at the start of the book explaining that that because Into the Fire is equal parts paranormal and romance she is using both her paranormal writing name as well as her romance writing name. Seeing as I love both paranormal and romance books, her foreword made me even more excited for Into the Fire. I have not yet experienced a book where the main character is a phoenix. Basically, the only phoenix I was familiar with before was Fawkes.
I think they are fascinating creatures and Ashelyn Drake did a great job making them her own in this book. Her Phoenixes get 5 lives, but the most important transition by far is between the first and second life for them. That is when they become a full phoenix and that is also the life where they forget everything about their first life. I am not quite sure why this is the only like they forget about, but I am guessing that it has something to do with the fact that they weren’t a full phoenix before this first transition. But that isn’t really something covered by the book.
The book starts out with Cara’s brother going through the transition and everyone takes it pretty hard. I suppose it would be tough to watch someone you are so close with forget all about you. But this story is more about Cara and the new guy in town, Logan. Logan is beyond adorable. He is so cute with Cara. I loved that the book really was very evenly split between their romance and “imprint” and the phoenix history. I will say that I called the hunter right off the bat. I didn’t want it to be who it was, but I was not surprised at the reveal towards the end.
You learn a lot of phoenixes and phoenix hunters in this book. I do wish we got a little bit more hunter history though. I think that would have been interesting. Either way, Into the Fire is a great read. The book flows along at a brisk pace and it is so easy to get swept up in the story. I read this book in one sitting and I enjoyed myself the whole time- right up until that humdinger of an ending! It was not what I wanted to happen at all! The second book had better do some damage control for that because it looked pretty serious left where it was. I can’t wait to see what the author is going to do. I am going to continue this series for sure. If you are a fan of paranormal romance books and you are looking for a new creature to discover and fall in love with, check out Into the Fire and the Birth of the Phoenix series. I love finding series about unique paranormals, and Ashelyn Drake did a really good job with this one.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
kindlemom1
Hopefully in the next book you will get a little more history about the hunters. I am sad that you figured things out so quickly though but it doesn’t sound like that hurt the story too much for you.
Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Sounds like a great read! I haven’t read anything about Phoenixes either – I love reading new and unique paranormal stories!
erinf1
congrats to Ashelyn on the new release! This looks and sounds fantastic 🙂 Thanks for sharing!
Ashley C
Sounds interesting. Thanks for the chance!
bex smith
Looks like a fantastic read!
Olivia
This sounds like a book well worth my time! I have never read one where the main character is a phoenix at all, so this will definitely be something new. I also like the idea of starting out with a transition.
http://olivia-savannah.blogspot.nl/2014/09/bridge-of-deaths-blog-tour-giveaway.html