Jennifer R. Povey

Laura led a sheltered, middle class existence. Oh, she knew she was adopted, but what did it matter? A lot when her birth mother is murdered and the killers come after her next... for reasons that are deep in her very blood.

Daughter of Fire

Jessica Nottingham

Jennifer Povey was kind enough to send me a copy of this book for review, and I am a huge Urban Fantasy fan so I happily agreed. I can't deny, I'm a sucker for a strong female character. Urban Fantasy tends to deliver those in spades! So I settled myself in, and got ready for a wild romp.

Now, I can't say that I exactly liked Laura as a main character. She's a little tough to love with her constant mood changes. I did at least understand her though, especially for the first few chapters. Discovering that your mother is somehow caught up in a mystery that is now coming to rest on you? Definitely cause for some emotional trauma. I could forgive her for that. What I had a hard time with really was how often she went from being completely sure of herself, to utterly lost. It's normal for a character to not feel sure of themselves when their whole life is thrown upon them in an instant. Laura was a little excessive in that respect though.

My biggest issue with this book though was definitely the writing. While the plot is fast paced and interesting enough, this book could have done with some polish from an editor. The storyline gets very choppy in places, skipping weeks at a time from paragraph to paragraph, which is jarring. A lot of the sentences in this story are also constructed in a way that make them a bit hard to understand. I completely acknowledge that ellipses are useful to build tension or show a character's thought process. In this book there are entirely too many though. It makes an already roughly cut story line that much more difficult to follow, because Laura is always only semi finishing her thoughts.

I thought the premise of this book was great, and I see a lot of potential in this mix of magic and action. Laura grew enough by the end of the story that I finally felt like we understood one another. I just think that this book, and the next one that I hope is in process, could use another set of eyes to help give them some more polish.

Daughter of Fire

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