Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Review: The Survivors by Amanda Havard


Hello, Therians!

With the release of Book 3 in The Survivors Series, Body & Blood, today, I thought I'd review each book, one by one in separate posts :)

Look out for my Body & Blood Release Day Launch post as there is a superb giveaway of an iPad 2 16GB pre-loaded with all three books as well a plenty of other goodies!

What's more, The Survivors (Book 1) is currently free on Amazon, and Book 2, Point of Origin is only $0.99c. (see below for buying links)


In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead.

Fourteen of them survived.

The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family's sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.

On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she's sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality.

After all... HOW DO YOU KILL A SURVIVOR?

The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie's life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you'll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself. And it is only the beginning.



The Survivors is FREE on Amazon 7/23 - 7/26!!
Grab your copy now!!





REVIEW
This book surprised me in every way. I didn't read the entire blurb ( I hardly ever do for fear of it giving to much away ), so I really thought it was a book about 14 survivors of the Salem Witch Trials, but it was so much more. It was the story of one woman's struggles to find herself. One woman who dared to ask questions, who dared to want more, even if that meant finding the key to her own mortality.

I quickly came to expect the unexpected. There was never a moment when I could surmise what would happen next. From what I thought would be another love story between a human and paranormal creature, grew into so much more with the addition of the Winters and the realization that there was far more to this world than what Sadie knew and believed to be true.

I fell hopelessly in love with Cole Hardwick. He was such the perfect gentleman. Even though I would have liked to see more of him, and at times I had to wonder what his true purpose was, I did grasp the fact that he was Sadie's "human" lifeline. My heart broke for the thoughts he projected to Sadie even when he knew it was hopeless. He was an open book, in his own mind, and his loyalty to her was very endearing.

There were a few times when I found myself comparing this book to a few others in this genre, but it had enough unique plot twists and characters for me to over look the similarities. The exciting thing about this story was the plethora of supernatural beings that emerged. If you're tired of the usual vampire story, this is one book that needs to be read. It took the vampire myth and dissected it, until what you thought you knew meant nothing, and that made way for are entire new breed of vampire.

The Winters were an electrifying group. I loved learning about their unique talents, some I had never heard of or could never have even imagined until reading this book. I especially loved Ginny. She was fun and bubbly.
Mark was a mystery, one I couldn't wait to unravel. Everett...hmm...I still don't know if I like him or not. The chemistry between him and Sadie was instantaneous, but I just didn't believe it. It just didn't feel right. Yes, they had, and still have, some major obstacles standing in their way but it was more than that. I didn't warm to him as much as I did some of the other characters. Maybe I was just holding out hope for poor Cole. I guess only time and the next book will tell.

As for Sadie, I can only imagine that one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do was to go back and face her family. But she stayed loyal and when different threats arose, she knew what had to be done, no matter how difficult it would be. I only wish that some of the Survivors had seen her loyalty for what it was, rather than dismissing it as easily as they had.

Havard has a fantastic way of keeping the mystery that is Sadie alive, giving just enough away to keep you in suspense. As the story unfolded, so the question of who, or more accurately what she was, was never far from my mind. And even though is was clear that she wasn't human, her need to fit in and the internal struggle to find peace was something we can all relate to, in some way or another.

This book was exciting start to this series, with many twists and turns that kept the story one step ahead of it's reader at all times. I cannot wait to dive straight into book 2.
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Other books in The Survivors series:



The winter is upon us. The Survivors are in chaos. The war is coming.

One year ago, Sadie Matthau was living among humans, existing as one of them. But now she wakes each morning in a house in the Survivors City, listening to the invocations and insults of her family members as they cope with their new future. A war. Rogue abandoners turned monsters. Sadie and the icy Winters living in their midst, bringing the outside world in.

The Survivors: Point of Origin is Sadie's quest to save her family. But can she find what she is looking for when she can barely stomach the Winters wintry demeanor and finds herself distracted by Cole Hardwick s warm heart? Will she be able to uncover her family's history even as the elders grip tightens around her throat? In an action packed ride full of magic and misery, terror and triumph, Sadie Matthau seeks the Survivors beginning just in time to face her end


Point of Origin (Book 2) is ON SALE for $0.99!! http://amzn.to/PointOfOrigin
The game has changed.

Fresh from her first brush with mortality, a fragile Sadie Matthau is playing human with Cole Hardwick while the Survivors endure unimaginable tragedy. Wrought with the first deaths of their own kind, a tyrant who will torture them, and an opponent more terrifying than anyone could have foreseen, the Survivors are facing their end.
Told from three points of view, The Survivors: Body & Blood is a bloodcurdling, mind-bending, heart-stopping ride. As Sadie and the Winters uncover more enemies, more history, and more answers, they find themselves brought closer together and ripped further apart. And all the while, a haunting Alexander Raven lurks at the edge of Sadie’s lifeline, at the darkening fringes of her mind.
As the Survivors descend into chaos, Sadie realizes a painful truth: the deepest of secrets leave the darkest of marks.
Caught between a terrifying fantasy and her own grim reality, Body & Blood is the story of Sadie’s dance with her demons, future, past, and present.


Body & Blood (Book 3) for $2.99!! http://bit.ly/BodyBlood

ABOUT THE AUTHOR



Amanda Havard thinks in stories. She writes books and songs, tells stories to people over coffee or in elaborate iPad apps, in short films or subtle photographs. Stories are her life. THE SURVIVORS: BODY & BLOOD is her third novel, and is an amalgamation of all of her storytelling love combined. Originally from Dallas, Texas, she now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, a place where creativity drips from the sap of the trees, radiates from the attitude of the population, and seeps from the concrete. The inventor of the Immersedition™ interactive book app, Havard is always looking for the next best story-- and the most innovative way to tell it.



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        www.amandahavard.com
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