Book Review for Shadow Marked by Anna J. Evans

Title: Shadow Marked

Author: Anna J. Evans

Release Date: May 4th 2010

Samantha Quinn has been in the dark since age six, when her parents sacrificed her sight in a Satanic ritual. She is trying to get over her demonic past, but horrific lifelike visions haunt her. Her intuition gets stronger and clearer after a wild, adrenaline-fueled sexual encounter with Jace, her brother’s childhood friend. And now Samantha is more tormented than ever by what she can “see”-and by what she felt in that forbidden encounter…

Samantha must now prevent the deaths she sees in her premonitions and protect her body from the same demon from her twisted childhood. Her dark curse reveals that Jace will be the next victim, and it is crystal clear that she must destroy the demon to protect her love.

My Review: This is a book I actually found by accident.  My friend Susan, from Wastepaper Prose, and I were in Pennsylvania for an author event being held in a book store, so naturally we wandered around and browsed through the books.  We eventually got back to the YA section, where we saw two copies of this book.  Neither of us had seen it before, so we read the back cover.  We were both intrigued and decided to get it.  I had another book to finish before I could start this one, but I was anxious to see what this book had to offer.

After reading the first three chapters, I was pretty sure this book had been put in the wrong section of the store.  If you read the first couple of chapters you will definitely see what I am talking about.  The heat between the two main characters practically burns the pages.  Peaked your curiosity yet?  Well mine certainly was, but I had to know if this was really a YA title.   I looked up the book and discovered that it is actually an adult paranormal romance.  So, if you happen to have bookstores that for some weird reason thinks this is YA too, do not be fooled.  It is very much adult, in a good way of course

As for the content, I really enjoyed a paranormal angle I had not seen before.  Demons walking the earth, reeking havoc, causing all sorts of problems for the human population.  There is a catch here though, everyone knows about them.  Actually, they not only know about them, but the government does not want to kill them off and uses them as tourist attractions.  Weird right?  I thought so too, but it completely worked.

The chemistry between the Jace and Samantha is explosive , especially in the beginning!   Towards the end of the book it did fizzle just a little bit, but to be fair they were in the middle of a pretty major battle which tends to get in the way of alone moments.  Watching Jace struggle to make sense of his feelings for Samantha throughout the story was beyond entertaining.  He does not easily give into his emotions, but Samantha did a great job of pulling them out of him, willing or not.  My favorite parts of the book were always inside Jace’s head and watching to his walls slowly crumble and give into Samantha.

The twists and turns the plot takes you through were fantastic!  The book was like a big puzzle with all the pieces jumbled up leaving me scrambling to try and make my brain work to put it all together.  I thought I had almost everything pieced together, but Anna did a great job of keeping me guessing and wondering who the enemy really was.  The element of surprise in the book was alive and well, which made me very happy.

Overall I am glad I stumbled across this book, even if it was in the wrong section.  It was a new spin on the paranormal, which is always refreshing and it left me wanting to read more in this world.  Which is why I am looking forward to the next book which is called Demon Marked, due out January 4th, so I don’t have to wait long, yay!