Deception Review and Friday's (6/18) Contest for Two ARCS

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Deception 

by Lee Nichols

pub: June 2010/Bloomsbury

Teen Fiction

Summary:

When Emma Vaile's parents leave on mysterious business trip, it gives her the perfect excuse to be a rebellious teen. Throw some parties, get a tattoo (or maybe just a piercing), and enjoy the first few weeks of her junior year. Then her best friend stops talking to her, the cops crash her party, and Emma finds herself in the hands of a new guardian—her college-age "knight in J.Crew armor," Bennett Stern—and on a plane to his museum-like mansion in New England. 

After enrolling at Thatcher Academy, Emma settles in by making friends with teh popular legacy crown. But she can't shake the strange visions that are haunting her. She has memories of Thatcher she can't explain, as if she's returning home to a place she's never been. Emma doesn't trust anyone anymore - except maybe Bennett. But he's about to reveal a ghostly secret. One that will explain the visions...and make Emma fear for her life. 

Review:

Emma's family disappears, her best friend drops her and her new friend betrays her. Now she's in Maine with her older brother's former best friend, Bennett, acting as her guardian. Ba-bam! Instant sympathetic heroine whose charming voice makes her easy to love.


Deception shines as a fun paranormal. Emma's feisty personality comes across in her snappy voice that made me laugh. 

It's revealed that Emma is a ghostkeeper which means she can see ghosts and has a specific connection with them (and she isn't going crazy!). Usually a ghostkeeper has one power but Emma has a multitude. In short she is one of the most powerful types and has an intriguing connection with a woman from the past. 


She makes real friends at school, gets a mother figure who helps train her powers, and also develops friendships with several amusing ghosts.


The paranormal storyline is fresh and interesting - full of humor, adventure and action. Emma's voice is a blast - snappy, snarky - loved it! And I adored the relationships she develops with her human friends, the ghosts, and Martha, the mother figure - really, the secondary characters are among the best I've read. I wanted to invite them all to dinner!

She gets some really cool powers for some action-packed battle scenes toward the end. She's very kick butt!


Romance: Emma has been madly in love with Bennett for years. He's her older brother's former BFF. He's 20 to her 17 years. Okay, maybe he's good-looking but he's rude, arrogant, deceitful and condescending, so I'm not sure why she still has the school girl crush. And while I like Emma, she's a normal fairly immature seventeen-year-old so I'm unclear at to why Bennett has any romantic interest in her.  

Not sure if it's the age difference - I know it's not much but technically she's jailbait and... Honestly, I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's just the fact that Bennett comes off as such a jerk and I think Emma deserves better. Either way, I didn't get the chemistry.


And then you have Coby, who's her age and a sweetheart. Since Emma thinks she "should" like him and Bennett is being such a donkey's behind, she pursues a relationship with Coby - which doesn't bode well for him. I got annoyed with how she treated the boy.


I loved the paranormal aspect of Deception and the friendships - humans and ghost - and while the romance didn't work for me, I'm more interested in the action and paranormal, so I still enjoyed the story immensely.


There's some underage drinking mentioned (which frankly I didn't think was necessary as it did nothing to move the story along) but no one gets drunk. There's talk of others having sex in the past but no sex going on in the story - just some kissing - and very little swearing. I can recommend this to younger teens. 


The Ending: Mixed emotions here. The fighting sequence rocks, exciting full of action and brings things full circle. I was disappointed in how the relationships end up. I liked that while it's left open for a sequel there is no major (annoying) cliffhanger AND the nifty twist at the very end was a surprising delight!

Bottom Line: Yes, the romance fell flat for me but... Very good writing, full of humor, laced with a generous dose of mystery and diabolical creepy, combined with fantastic secondary characters in this fast-paced original paranormal starring a spunky, sympathetic heroine who rises to enormous challenges. Phew! That was a long-winded way of saying bring on the sequel!

The Cover: I love the Gothic mansion and the smokey spirits. I would prefer to see less of the girl but as you may know that's a personal quirk of mine. Overall, I think it's good.

The Author:
 Lee Nichols was born in Marblehead, Mass., raised in Santa Barbara, and now lives in Yarmouth, Maine. Which is probably why the four years she attended Hampshire College in Amherst, where she studied history and psychology, made her antsy. It was much too far from the ocean.

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