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Monday, January 19, 2015

The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe (ARC)

The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (The V Trilogy #2)
Joanna Wiebe
Exp. Pub.: January 20, 2015 (TOMORROW!!)

The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (The V Trilogy, #2) Life and death, light and dark, spirit and flesh - on Wormwood Island, the lines are always blurred. For Anne Merchant, who has been thrust back into this eerily secretive world, crossing the line seems inevitable, inescapable, destined.

Now, as Ben finds himself battling for the Big V and Teddy reveals the celestial plan in which Anne is entwined, Anne must choose: embrace her darkly powerful connection to a woman known as Lilith and, in doing so, save the boy she loves...or follow a safer path that is sure to lead to Ben's destruction at the hands of dark leaders. Hoping the ends will justify the means, Anne starts down the slippery slope into the underworld, intent on exploring the dark to find the light. But as the lure of Lilith proves powerfully strong, will Anne save others - only to lose herself?
 
***If you haven't read The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant,
there be spoilers ahead!***

Unique, mysterious and heartbreaking. Anne Merchant proves even the darkest of souls can be selfless when it comes to saving the ones you love.

Right when Anne Merchant thought she had Villicus beat, she's cruelly ripped from the mortal world and forced to return to Wormwood Island, where the residents are anything but living. Even though Anne's the only student attending Cania Christy who is selectively different, she can still be put in her place by blackmail. Her actions have not only backfired on herself, but her father and Ben as well. Her father is now forced to do the same work as Ben's father, and Ben is now forced to attend the school and compete for the big V as well. And for those of you naughty readers who are breezing through my review before reading the first novel, the V doesn't stand for what you think it does, obviously. :)

But Anne's problems don't end with being nicknamed Murdering Merchant by her heckling classmates. Villicus has been replaced by yet another headmaster, one who has way too much interest in Anne and scheduling special mentoring sessions to occupy her time. But with Ben's time ticking away until graduation and him making no effort to win the elite prize, Anne must do the unthinkable to force him to try, and the repercussions are even worse than she anticipated. So the return of a lost friend couldn't come at a more opportune time, though her reason for being there is bittersweet.

With the arrival of a group of unusual female teachers, it doesn't take Anne long to realize who they are, and as she does what she's told and begins to look more closely at everything around her, she begins to realize there's a bigger game at play, and that Anne herself has a history that could unravel Cania Christy's very way of life on a permanent basis.

4.5 dreamcatchers. If you read the first, the second is even better. If you haven't read the first novel yet, check it out. For awhile you'll think their competition is downright silly until you learn what they're really competing for, then it all seems to make sense why they go about it the way they do. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how the final installment of this paranormal trilogy plays out, and whether or not Anne will be able to fix the heartbreaking nightmare we're currently left with.
 
ARC provided by BenBella Books for honest review.

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