I was a little disappointed with this sequel although young tweeners (the target age range for this book) would probably still enjoy it. All the adventure, the suspense, the strong female protagonist - all the things that caused me to give The Hollow Kingdom a five star rating were missing from this sequel. This book was more character driven than the previous but unfortunately none of the very abundant characters was ever allowed to develop sufficiently to make the reader care anything about them.

Towner Whitney is forced to return to Salem MA, after an absence of almost 15 years, when her Great-Aunt Eva goes missing. Once she is back in Salem Towner soon finds out that she will need to confront the ghosts of her past in order to move on into her future. Through a series of flashbacks and memories the reader finds out that the Whitney family is not quite what they seem. The story is filled with a cast of eccentric characters from Towner's mother May who refuses to step a foot off the island she lives on, to her uncle Calvin who has been saved and has started his own religious cult at a local campground, to a collection of witches who seem to have gravitated to Salem because of it's historical past.
The writing in this story is excellent and there were many features that made this book appeal to me. Each chapter is prefaced with a quote from The Lace Reader's Guide by Eva Whitney which is a convention I found appealing in itself. However, these little excerpts do more than just introduce the tone of each chapter, They end up providing important foreshadowing of what is to come later in the book. Meanwhile, the true story of Towner's family is revealed to the reader slowly, memory by painful memory, as Towner actually draws her past back to her consciousness out from the mental "lock-box" where she has stored all her Salem memories away. Then, one final twist at the very end of the story makes the reader to want to go back and start the story all over again, re-reading it with the new eyes.
This is a great book that will keep you guessing throughout.

This unique urban fantasy, inspired by W.B. Yeats poem of the same name, tells the lore of the changeling from two points of view: the child transforming into a changeling and the changeling transforming back to a human. Both characters have quite a lot in common, both appear to be the last of their kind and both are uncommonly interested in their past, dimly-remembered lives.

I read Joshilyn Jackson's Gods in Alabama last year and enjoyed it, so I was really looking forward to reading this one. I wasn't disappointed. I'd have to say I liked this even better than Gods because this one really reaches out and touches your heart. It's funny and heartfelt and all about families (the love and the feuds) and small town life.

I like the Anita Blake character and I liked finding out a little bit more about her past - especially her first experience with (inadvertently) raising the dead. I also enjoy unraveling the (sometimes obscure) hometown references. Like the first Anita Blake Vampire Hunter book this one was also full of action and girl-power, but I sort of missed the vampires. Jean-Claude and Willie had a very small part in this one. This book was more about Anita and her zombies.