Mundie Moms

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Book Review: The Survivors by Amanda Havard


Published by: Chafie Press LLC
Released on: March 29th, 2011
Source: signed arc from author at ALA-Midwinter
4 stars: I Enjoyed It
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks
Add to Goodreads

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 the first book in a promising series with the same name. Full of unique paranormal lore and a variety of paranormal characters with a wide range of abilities, Amanda Havard does a great job at introducing readers to her intriguing world. I loved that this series starts out with the Salem Witch trials. There's been little YA books that have their stories tied to this historical event, and I thought Amanda did an incredible job with creating a series that starts off with this horrific event. Though The Survivors doesn't go into details about the Salem Witch trials, the characters that emerge in this book are children who accused of being witches and driven out of their village a couple weeks after the trail was over. 

Being a huge paranormal fan, I really enjoyed the wide range of paranormal characters that are apart of Sadie's story. They cover everything from Witches, Vampires, Shape-Shifters and more are. Though they're deemed "out casts" or aren't considered real in the human world, they all live within in their own family groups trying to blend into a world they've never been accepted into, with little to no human contact for the most part. I loved how their old world views clashed with the world's more modern day views. Being an immortal and hiding out of view from humans since the 1600's would take a toll on me. Luckily Sadie isn't a character who sits by idly and allows those leaders of her "family" to make all the decisions for her. She puts herself out there and wants to learn more about who she is, her family's history, how The Survivors, whom are immortal, can be killed. In doing so she goes to place that's forbidden. 

I liked that while The Survivors all live within the human world, they find blending in with humans sinful.   The fact that Sadie doesn't let that deter her makes me admire her all the more. She has this fierce determination about her that I loved. She's definitely a strong willed character, and someone I enjoyed getting to know. I admire her independence, her quest for answers, and her ability to live among humans no matter how hard it is. A character who matches Sadie's personality well is her romantic interest Everett. They have this sweet, innocent romance that at times made me want to push them together and tell them to just make out already. I will say I respected Everett and Sadie's strong values and their ability to stick to them. Everett is someone I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know more about. The twist about his family that's revealed towards the end of the book is great! 

Aside from the characters, I really enjoyed the historical references and the paranormal history and lore that Amanda created. I loved being able to travel all over the world with Sadie in her quest for answers. Her determination to find out more about her history, how Survivors can be destroyed and so forth as she visits different places looking into the paranormal myths present in each location, added some of the excitement into the story line. I enjoyed The Survivors and I thought Amanda did a great job at laying the foundation for the rest of the series, but I felt like something was missing from the book. Given what some of the characters are, I had excepted a little bit more action in this story than there was. I'm looking forward to Point of Origin, and finding out what's in store for Sadie and family next. 

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