Welcome to the Syrenka series book tour! Here at Stories of my life, you'll have the chance to read reviews of all three books through its duration, and if you want to check out other great stuff like excerpts or guest posts (and other reviews too!) you just have to check the master schedule, clicking on the Tour Banner above.
There's two surprises: one is a tour-wide giveaway where you can win signed paperbacks of the whole series plus some cool swag... And the other is exclusive to Stories of my Life and consist on a giveaway for your e-book of choice of the series. You'll find instructions on how to enter at the end of the post.
And now that the deets are out of the way, I give you... Syrenka!
Life as a mermaid can be suffocating.
Eviana
Dumahl has returned home as a clan leader, an orphan, and a heartbroken
teenage girl. Her parents are dead and her boyfriend, Brendan, has
decided that he needs some time away. While battling her inner turmoil,
Eviana is forced into the war that Lucian Sutherland has incited amongst
her own kind. With the help of Kain, her friend and formally betrothed,
the two work together to prove that they deserve their birthrights as
young merfolk leaders.
When the Council requests a demonstration
of Eviana’s mermaid powers, she finds herself with an opportunity to win
back Brendan’s heart. But her orders to train with a repulsive merman
and the presence of an attractive new suitor challenges Eviana to
embrace her leadership and resist temptation. Lucian is after her, and
no one seems to understand why. Loyalties are tested as the casualties
increase, showing Eviana that sometimes it is impossible to delineate
between friends and enemies.
Betrayal is the second book of The
Syrenka Series trilogy following Eviana and her friends as they navigate
through the challenges of existing in a secret world.
You’ve
heard of middle-book syndrome, right? When nothing really happens, but a
Trilogy Must Be Written anyway? Well, Betrayal is exactly the opposite!
Remember
when I reviewed the first book over here and said that it did a wonderful
world-building job, and that it laid the pieces for a great story? In Betrayal,
we watch carefully as those pieces... Fall apart. Crumble to pieces. In the
best possible way. You thought you’d have time to plan for the oncoming
debacle, to prepare? Time to get sucked up in your own personal drama and to
solve it with a happily ever after? Did you think that things were harsh enough
for Eviana, and that she would catch a break?
She doesn’t.
Lucian is evil, but he’s not an idiot. He’s not a cartoon villain, even if his
motivations are unclear and I could only guess Eviana’s crucial role a few
paragraphs before it was delivered. He knows that if he wants to win, he has to
win: he can’t wait for victory to drop in his lap. And he knows exactly how and
where to hit to do that. Also, since he must be part psycho, he’s not scared of
doing what must be done, by whatever means necessary. And... that’s what Betrayal
is all about.
Eviana will
flounder to keep her tenuous leadership. Her emotional life is in shambles,
after the events of Promises, but she’s no longer a teenage girl waiting to
live her dream. She has to step up and prepare to face the disaster. Blow after
blow, she’ll learn that the only way to face Lucian is on his own terms... And
this part was beautiful. I simply loved the risk the author took: usually,
things work for the hero. To have pillar after pillar, support after support
point brutally pulled from under her feet was a daring experience, and it
worked perfectly. When you throw in the fact that this events happen one right
after the other, barely leaving the cast time to recover and, might I add,
exactly like a guy with a twisted mind like Lucian would work, is just the
icing on the cake.
The cast
itself is another aspect I liked. On the one hand, I liked Eviana and her
sister Marisol; I saw how they changed and matured due to circumstances, and
while growing up that fast for the reasons they did is never pretty, seeing it
actually happen was gorgeous. It’s too easy to remain the teenager in these
books, no matter the calamities the plot throws at us, but this time? There’s
growth. And there’s room for more.
Another
point where I have to give Kudos to Amber Garr is the romance. This aspect
is... complicated at best. Let’s just say that I have never read a book where I
can’t tell who the heroine is going to end up with after reading a couple of
chapters, let alone a couple of books. And it’s ever rarer that I don’t know
myself who I’d want her to end up with. Well done! Every single love interest
is special in their own way, lovable in their own way, and I can fall in love
with every single one of them... Yes, even the bad option!
And that’s
all I can say without spoiling it for you. Want to know more? Go and read! :)
About
the Author
Amber Garr spends her days conducting scientific experiments and wondering if her next door neighbor is secretly a vampire. Born in
Pennsylvania, she lives in Florida with her husband and their furry
kids. Her childhood imaginary friend was a witch, Halloween is
sacred, and she is certain that she has a supernatural sense of
smell. She writes both adult and young adult urban fantasies and when
not obsessing over the unknown, she can be found dancing, reading, or enjoying a good movie.
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