YA Review & Contest: THE MARKED SON by Shea Berkley

After you read today's review and enter the contest, I invite you to head over to my critique partner Susan’s blog, Wastepaper Prose, where I’m visiting today and blogging about one of my favorite preternatural species: ELVES! Stop by and read why I love ‘em. But first, read on to win a copy of...

Another book in the new “Upper YA” genre. I love this genre! You can read why in a review of an upper YA a few days ago here (and still time to enter that contest too). Today, I’m looking at The Marked Son by Shea Berkley, the first in a Keepers of Life series. See what you think. 

THE OFFICIAL BLURB:  Seventeen-year-old Dylan Kennedy always knew something was different about him, but until his mother abandoned him in the middle of Oregon with grandparents he’s never met, he had no idea what. When Dylan sees a girl in white in the woods behind his grandparents’ farm, he knows he’s seen her before…in his dreams. He’s felt her fear. Heard her insistence that only he can save her world from an evil lord who uses magic and fear to feed his greed for power. Unable to shake the unearthly pull to Kera, Dylan takes her hand. Either he’s completely insane or he’s about to have the adventure of his life, because where they’re going is full of creatures he’s only read about in horror stories. Worse, the human blood in his veins has Dylan marked for death…

MY THOUGHTS: I’ll get a stylistic tic out of the way first. This book threw me at first because Dylan’s story is told in first-person present tense, while Kera’s story is told in third-person past-tense. Once I got used to the rhythm of the story, it didn’t bother me anymore...in fact, I sort of liked it because Dylan’s in the here-and-now and Kera’s, well, not.

            Kera is an interesting classic fantasy character; Dylan is a modern contemporary fantasy character, and when their two worlds finally collide, it’s magical. Berkley does a great job of capturing a realistic feel for a young man caught in that emotional seesaw between teens and manhood, in a world he doesn’t understand, and with people he can’t quite bring himself to trust—as desperately as he wants to—ruled more by emotion than reason.

            There are two more books planned for this series.

Want to win a copy of The Marked Son? It’s the usual the drill: +1 for comment, +1 for blog follow, +1 for Twitter follow @Suzanne_Johnson, and +1 for Tweet or Retweet.