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The Book Of Lost Souls (2011)

by Michelle Muto(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Dreamscapes, Ink

series

Ivy MacTavish

review 1: Completely amazed once again at another book by Michelle Muto! I swear she has this way with words and this book left me wanting more. The Book of Lost Souls is about magic, shifters, vamps, demons…basically all the things paranormal. Most would consider this book DARK because of what it’s about but I guess that makes me a little dark too because I absolutely LOVED it!I have to admit this review has taken me hours to write. Not because it sucked, far from it in fact. It was so good that I’m actually speechless. I read this book a few weeks ago and then again right before this post. Why you ask? Well other than it being that good, I’m finding it hard to form words to describe how awesome it is without revealing too much. I don’t like giving away too much because w... moreell, it spoils the book.So there is this girl, her name is Ivy. She lives in Northwick which is a small town with more kindred’s then regulars. Kindred’s are people of the supernatural flavor like witches, demons, vamps, and werewolf. Regulars are humans. They coexist with each other out of convenience. Ivy is kindred and so are her friends: Shayde and Bane (their twins), Raven and Gareth, and Nick. There are other kindred’s that you will be introduced to like Dean, Tara, Phoebe but I’m not a fan of any of them. LoLMagic. I absolutely love magic and Ivy is a teen witch that packs some oomph! Her two best friends Shayde, the cautious one, and Raven the adventurous one are a prime example of having an angel and devil on your shoulder. You learn that in chapter one with the spell Ivy is performing. A no no spell that needs the kindred’s councils approval, but what mom and the council doesn’t know won’t hurt them right?Well that starts a series of events that places two books in Ivy’s hands. What books are they you ask? Well one isn’t that important and the other one… dark magic. However there is one book missing… The Book of Lost Souls contains spells that can bring back the ugliest of souls to unleash death upon Northwick and the outside world. Like a normal teenager Ivy is into Dean, the good guy. The guys she thinks she needs. The guy that’s not like who she thinks her father became. Then there’s Nick. I absolutely adore Nick but he has a past, a past that Ivy doesn’t seem to look past because it reminds her of her father. But looks are deceiving and what she thinks is black and white might not be that easy. Her friends try to dissuade her from Dean and get her to go with Nick.“He’s really hot. Sorry, bad demon pun.”As you can see with that quote Nick is a demon, a hot one at that, but aren’t they all? Nick knows things about the books, but can Ivy trust him enough to listen and believe what he says? Could he be genuine with what he is saying or is it a rouse to get his hands on the book she has in her possession?“Look, Ivy. I might not be who you end up with I’m not even who you think you want… But Ives…We both know that right now, I’m just what you need.”Taking a chance Ivy decides to hear what Nick has to say. Things are getting crazy though. Murders are taking place, which is very uncommon….Someone has the other book and their using it. Banding together with her friends and Nick can they stop whoever it is who has the book and whatever souls have been released? A mystery man comes in to help Ivy and gives her exactly what she needs to defeat those souls but at what cost? Sending away her friends and Nick will Ivy embrace the dark magic to survive? Will Nick turn his head and believe she’s already lost to darkness? Read The Book of Lost Souls to find out what happens. I can’t wait for the next book in this series, the end will leave you craving more!“See you took my heart and I never saw it coming.”
review 2: "The Book of Lost Souls" is the first in a series of novels featuring plucky teenaged witch, Ivy MacTavish. She and her best friends, Shayde and Raven (a werewolf and a vampire) live in a pleasant enough New England town called Northwick, where the Regulars (meaning non-magical humans) and Kindreds (vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons) live in a peaceable detente. The night of the big Northwick High Halloween Party, Ivy has found the perfect date: a beefcake model in a magazine ad. All she has to do is make him human, and she has found the perfect spell to do so. She'll simply concentrate on the magazine ad and turn Spike, a horned-toad lizard belonging to Raven's younger brother (another vampire), into a studly human. Ivy is doing this to make Dean, upon whom she has a crush, sufficiently jealous that he would leave his girlfriend, Tara.Oh, and Nick, an already studly Sicilian demon, already likes Ivy, who finds him to be arrogant and vaguely creepy.Thus begins "The Book of Lost Souls." As punishment for wrecking the Halloween party, the three besties are assigned to clean up an old part of a town cemetery. On their way out, Ivy finds two old books: a magical gardening book, and a dark magic book. The package obviously once held three books. The third, alas, is "The Book of Lost Souls," with which the user can bring back horrible people from the past. The person who has that book proceeds to do so, and it's up to Ivy and friends to find the book, and get the evil duo banished back to hell before they can cause more damage.I liked "The Book of Lost Souls" just fine. However, it seemed aimed way more at teens and tweens than at adults. This is not a bad thing. There wasn't anything objectionable in the book, and even the scariest parts wouldn't be too scary for younger readers--less intense than the early Harry Potter books. Being neither a teen nor a tween, I didn't get as much out of "The Book of Lost Souls." I thought the whole werewolf/witch/vampire best-friends circle (er, triangle?) was a little too cute. The werewolves, for example, just changed into werewolves, who were fast and strong and had awesome smell, but who didn't undergo a painful transformation, and who could still communicate with their friends. The vampires were able to go out in the daylight, and were perfectly content drinking corpse blood. Even Ivy, the heroine witch, just "came into her powers" at age 12, sort of like getting her first period. Most of her magic involves rolling up her car windows by just twiddling her fingers, or magicking cereal, bowls, and milk from the kitchen to the table. It's more "Bewitched" tv show magic.I enjoyed the Harry Potter novels, because they showed that having inborn power wasn't enough. To be a successful witch or wizard, you had to learn, to study, to practice. Incidentally, my favorite magic-based novels were "The Dresden Files" series. There, magic was taken beyond having a wand or a broom. It involved focusing natural forces, and a whole lot of ritual. As I said, this is an awesome book for younger teens and tweens, who would be overloaded (or bored by) "The Dresden Files," and other adult-targeted magic-based novels.I enjoyed "The Book of Lost Souls" well enough, even though I am not at all its target audience. I read author Michelle Muto's "Don't Fear the Reaper," and I loved it. "Reaper" transcended the YA demographic, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone, even my fellow grownups. With "The Book of Lost Souls" as a cornerstone, Ms Muto's "Ivy MacTavish" series should be a hit with its target audience. For me, being distressingly beyond my tween years, I lament that this book wasn't like "Reaper," which had tremendous cross-demographic appeal. As a book-lover, though, I'll just regret that nobody was writing fiction this good when I was 12, and being just a little jealous of 12 year-olds today, who can read these books and relate to them far better than I can, as a reluctant grown-up. less

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