Blog Tour & Giveaway: Tortured Souls (The Orion Circle #1) by Kimber Leigh Wheaton

Sometimes Rest in Peace isn’t an option…

Kacie Ramsey sees ghosts—and it’s ruining her life. Her mother left, her father blames her, and no matter how hard she tries, she can’t keep the ghosts away. Now a new power has emerged. Nightly visions of grisly murders and a relentless predator draw her to the brink of insanity.

When the phantom appears at a party, Kacie’s longtime crush, Logan, saves her. He invites her to join the Orion Circle, a group of supernatural hunters with chapters in schools all over the country. Through the Circle, Kacie learns to embrace her spiritual powers, and for the first time in her life she feels in control rather than a victim.

But the Foxblood Demon will not give up so easily. A demented serial killer in life who trapped the souls of the thirteen children he murdered, imprisoning them within the walls of his mansion. Now in death, he plots his return while drawing power from the pure souls of the children. He recognizes something in Kacie he’s never seen before—a medium powerful enough to provide a vessel for his tainted soul.

Kacie can’t ignore the tortured souls of the children crying out to her every night. With Logan at her side, she will fight the Foxblood Demon. But can they banish this powerful phantom, or will Kacie lose not only her body, but her eternal soul to the monster.

 

 

I was provided an ARC of this book as a part of the tour hosted by Xpresso Book Tours. It in no way affects my rating.

Check out the tour schedule, and don’t forget to enter the rafflecopter giveaway for $25 to Amazon!

Rating: 3/5

I have mixed feelings about this book. The overall plot was quite good, and I’m very pleased with how this book was wrapped up while letting us know what’s coming in the next book. It’s clear that this particular series of events wasn’t an isolated case, even though it read that way for most of the book. The range of characters and skills was also a good mix, and I generally liked how the rules of the world were presented.

However, I did find myself skimming portions. The characters didn’t draw me into the book as much as I would have liked, and there were fluff scenes that didn’t really do anything to progress any of the plots (primary or otherwise). I acknowledge that these kinds of scenes are important to teenagers and a key part of the YA genre, but they’re most useful when progressing a romance subplot, something that went so quickly at the beginning of the book that there wasn’t really any room for growth in the ‘fluff scenes’ later on.

I really wish we’d gotten to learn more about the Orion Circle in this book. It kind of felt like it was just introduced and that was enough. And for the specific plot of this novel, it probably was enough, but I didn’t really feel satisfied by the brief sample we got. I’m glad that this is an organization across all ages and it’s not just teenagers fending for themselves (which is a personal pet peeve), but I found myself somewhat confused by the role the adults played. The adult psychic in charge of the group, for instance, had a bad experience at the place that was causing all the problems, and from then on her only involvement was advice here and there while the kids were doing all the dangerous stuff. It seemed odd to me.

But overall, these are just little things, and they’re not intrusive to the book. My biggest complaint is in how the emotional issues were handled throughout the first ~third of the book. Kassie had some issues with her parents growing up, but some of the emotion around her past seemed a bit forced, as if she were explaining it because she had to have had a rocky past. She shares a very random story about her experience with a particular ghost in her house, which quite frankly should have caused her more emotional disturbance than her parents, and that story never really comes back up later. And then things are mended with her family almost instantaneously, which again, felt forced. Thankfully, most of that was out of the way by around the 35% mark.

This was still a really good book, and I encourage you to give it a go and at least make it well beyond the halfway point. It’s a quick read and definitely worth the time 🙂

About the Author:

Kimber Leigh Wheaton is a YA/NA author with a soft spot for sweet romance and is a member of Romance Writers of America.

She is married to her soul mate, has a teenage son, and shares her home with three dogs and four cats. No, she doesn’t live on a farm, she just loves animals. Her house is filled with dragons, though she does lament that they are the porcelain, non-flying variety.

Kimber Leigh is addicted to romance, videogames, superheroes, villains, and chocolate—not necessarily in that order. (If she has to choose, she’ll take a chocolate covered superhero!)

Her debut novel, Shadow Fire, is the first book in the Light Chronicles series. Watch for book two, Stolen Moon, a standalone sequel, coming August 2014.

Author links:

https://www.facebook.com/KimberLeighWheaton

http://www.kimberleighwheaton.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7885752.Kimber_Leigh_Wheaton

https://twitter.com/Cymberle

Don’t forget to visit the tour schedule and enter the rafflecopter giveaway for $25 to Amazon!