Keepers – M J Mallon YA Author and Poet

Goodreads Synopsis:

Saving the world is easy: all Eden has to do is die.

Seventeen-year-old Eden East’s life is perfect… until her soul is bound to her worst nightmare. Then her parents are brutally murdered, and everyone’s a suspect, including her best friend.

As her world spirals out of control, a charismatic Siren, from a past she can’t remember, returns offering help, hope, and a heap of distractions.

Eden must put aside her grief to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder. In a race against time, can she break the binding to her enemy before he destroys her and her world?

Three lives.
Two murdered parents.
One deadly choice.

My Review:

Keepers is the debut YA fantasy novel of Sacha de Black. I enjoyed the premise of the novel – a society that does its utmost to achieve a sense of balance – and found it to be an unusual and highly imaginative idea.

It’s a YA novel with stacks of opportunity to deliver emotional feelings, (the main protagonist Eden East is young and has to cope with a lot.) I won’t divulge too much here for fear of spoiling the novel.

One of Black’s great strengths is her ability to write physical attraction between two individuals so well! Wow, loved those parts! I’d say that Trey was one of my favourite characters in the book. I can imagine him as a very worthy candidate for the title ‘book boyfriend!’ And I really enjoyed Victor too! There is a love triangle of sorts as Eden is bound to Shifter Victor Dark and can’t bare to be, but Victor wants Eden like mad.

There were parts of the story where the author’s ability to write engaging prose, and dialogue took flight and her writing made me go wow, this is amazing. I see great potential in Black’s writing.

What I didn’t like:

A minor point (it may just be me!) There’s a glossary of terms in the front matter which took me out of the story a bit to begin with. I would have liked these terms added individually as short postscripts at the bottom of each relevant page.

My recommendation:

This is a confident debut, with interesting world building and potential for further conflict and interest in book two. Definitely a recommendation.

My rating: 4.5 stars.

To see all my reviews to date follow this link: https://mjmallon.com/category/a-z-book-reviews/

My Hitting The Books Pal wants to know – have you read Keepers? Do leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Happy reading!

Bye for now,