Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Review: The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden

Title: The Casquette Girls
Author: Alys Arden
Source: Xpresso Book Tours
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal
Release Date: October 31, 2013
Reviewed by: Jasmyn

After the Storm of the Century rips apart New Orleans, Adele Le Moyne and her father are among the first to return to the city following the mandatory evacuation. Adele wants nothing more than for life to return to normal, but with the silent city resembling a mold-infested war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normal will have to be redefined.

Mother Nature couldn’t drain the joie de vivre from New Orleans, but the flood waters recede, and the body count continues to rise. Someone or something is draining life from its residents. Events too unnatural – even for New Orleans – lead Adele to an attic that has been sealed for three hundred years, and the chaos she unleashes threatens not only her life but everyone she knows.

Caught suddenly in a hurricane of eighteenth-century myths and monsters, Adele must quickly untangle a web of magic that links the climbing murder rate back to her own ancestors. But who can you trust in a city where everyone has a secret, and where keeping them can be a matter of life and death – unless, that is, you’re immortal.




The Casquette Girls was a very nice take on the vampire legends.  It managed to combine so many pieces of myth into one powerful creature.  You mix that with some good old-fashioned voodoo and earth magic and you have quite a tale to tell.  At the center of the tale is Adele Le Moyne - recently returned to New Orleans after a massive hurricane has destroyed the city.  As she and her father try to put their home back together, strange things are happening around them - one of them is the unusual murders.  This is what sets Adele on quite an adventure.

The book is separated into three parts - each one building in tension and excitement.  After reading such great reviews I was disappointed in the first part.  There was so much build up and not a lot actually going on.  Part two and three really took off and once you reach that page you will not want to put the book down.  Pieces of the story are told from the past.  Sometimes this takes away from what is happening in the present, but in this case the two worlds seemed to merge and become a much bigger place than either was alone.

The vampires aren't obvious.  I loved that.  We suspect and we wonder and are still surprised when they are revealed.  The paranormal isn't limited to just vampires and magic though, there is so much buried beneath the surface of New Orleans that it seemed to be bursting at the seams.  This story is a step back to when the vampires weren't always the heros or the good guys.  They could be bad - and sometimes down right evil.  I loved the return to the darker days and themes of paranormal.

*This book was received in exchange for an honest review*




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