Darkness Becomes Her:

My rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Well now that I have successfully ruined my fingernails, bitten them down to roots, I can get on with a review and then possibly Secondhand Charm I hear it is light and pleasant, because boy was this story just a whole bunch a delicious darkness!

Mother nature had never been one to throw out favors and Ari was no exception to this. With teal eyes and silver hair its easy to stand out. Where difference is found in a person, so than can solace can be found. Ari is all too familiar with this as she drifts through her life, and as the realiztion of being always the orphaned girl weighs Ari to the ground she decides enough is enough. Her search for answers leads her to New Orleans where she finds she is not so quite different for the people who enhabit the post-apocoliptic city that thrums with dangers of the supernatural. But what happens when the most fearsome creature to walk the earth fear you? Well Ari does the only sane thing she thinks up, she pokes and prods until answers flow from the monsters mouths.

I enjoyed her writing style, not overly thick, no grammar mistakes, none of the excess 'ands' or badly formed sentences. The words word delicate and precise, cordial and as sharp as a blade, they seemed to thud along with the ruination of New 2, the new name for New Orleans. After receiving a letter from her dead mother Ari is attacked by a man who speaks a strange language and who can stand being shot twice. Worse than killing this man seems to come when he vanishes right before Ari's eyes. It feels as if she should receive some slack after this ordeal but no the story proceeds to where she almost gets run over my a 12 year old and than hitches a ride with her to New 2. 

When Ari arrives in New 2 it is later than a day that she starts to fall in love, meets vampire half-lings, suffers through a mind ripping migraine, and is stolen by another blond haired warrior identical to the one sent to kill her back in Covington. Ari is not a fan of dark places and so when instead of attacking her the warrior drags her off the a cellar Ari is not at all pleased. So much for the protection the Novem's promised her. In her prison she meets the most exciting people including a harpy and a spider woman, than get the most enthrall long news. A Goddess is after her! 

I do so love bitter dry whit, much preferable to the over bubbly optimism that seems to be flooding the main characters  of the YA reading world lately. Kelly Keaton delivers a semi-unoriginal plot that is thick with dark secrets and a strong female. It was darkly seductive and at the same time it felt like I'd read it already; twice. Never has a story unraveled so finely, like spun lace, and been set in such the right place. I am a large fan of New Orleans, withs it roots practically dripping magic, the mystically dark world Ari inhabits couldn't have been set in a better atmosphere.

What an invigorating and enthralling ride that was! Full of romance, ancient myths, determination, a war called forth by the goddess of war herself and all ending with a cry for vengeance.