Ashes to Ashes
From tragedy came power. And from mishandled power came mystery.
After moving into a new gated community with her family, Natalie is ready to begin a peaceful year at Emerson High. A year complete with boy troubles, school dances, new friends... everything an average girl could expect.
Then she starts receiving notes warning her not to go to school November first. Notes in her day planner, on a piece of homework, on a homecoming ticket... The more notes she receives the more details she uncovers, and the clearer it becomes: words like peaceful and normal are about the worst ones anyone could use to describe the year she’s about to have. Crazy? Maybe. Violent? Definitely. Heart-wrenching, mind-blowing, life-changing?
Well, that remains to be seen. All Natalie knows from the start is that she shouldn’t go to school on November first. And maybe you shouldn’t either.
Fair warning this is only the first book so be prepared to come to the end wanting more but knowing patience must become your greatest virtue. This is a suspenseful mystery that wants to grab its readers and pull them along on an exciting ride.
Right from the beginning we get to meet the characters that will shape this story which promises to be intriguing thanks to some extreme emotional outpouring in the first scene. The pace continues fairly slowly so we are given the opportunity to meet and understand whose story it is we will be witnessing.
There are moments the story’s pace becomes agonizingly slow and your frustration will increase but only because Thomas has provided so many intriguing questions you become desperate for those answers. She has created a suspenseful plot with a curious storyline and some interesting characters.
Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of development in the characters and some seemingly important ones, like the protagonists parents, seem to be missing. Since it’s only the first book I’m withholding too harsh of judgment on any flaws because it wouldn’t be the first time where I’ve read the first book in a series that was barely more than skeleton material only for the juicy stuff to come into play in future books.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next one because I’m vastly curious to see what she’s going to do.
Thank you to Netgalley and Ebbing Neptune Publishing for allowing me to review this book.
*synopsis and pic from netgalley.com