Something Witchy by A.J. Myers

Publisher: Parasite Publishing
Publishing Date: November 15, 2012
eBook: 210 pages

Rating: 4 stars

My name is Ember Blaylock. Welcome to the World of Weird—better known as my life.
It wasn’t always like this. I was once a normal high school senior, just filling out college apps and trying to stay sane long enough to get out of Moonlight, Missouri. Preferably before I ended up in a straight-jacket out of sheer boredom.
At first, my only problems were my increasingly unwanted ability to see the dead and my desperation to remove the stalker known as my ex-boyfriend from my life. Somewhere along the line I must have pissed off the Bad Karma Fairy. Maybe I stepped on the wrong toadstool or peed in Loki’s personal swimming pool—I really don’t know. All I do know is I’m about to have the worst week of my life. Maybe the worst week of any teenager’s life. Ever.
All because of a dead guy.

From the second pale, too-hot-to-be-real Nathan Ashley stepped out of the wreckage of his mangled sports car, my life spiraled into complete and utter chaos. One minute, I’m quasi-normal, the next I’m being kidnapped by a vampire, I’m having weird, creepy powers sprout up out of nowhere, and I’m running from a demon who wants to get more familiar with my anatomy…or kill me. Again. Yeah, did I mention he’s done it before?

Anybody know if those straight-jackets come in pink?

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
Since childhood, Ember Blaylock has been able to see ghosts. Spirits. The pulse-impaired. No matter what you call them, they’re all dead—and more than annoying. Despite spending her whole life trying to normalize everything around her as much as possible, Ember has always known that her gift is special. But if she thought that she and her ghostly posse were the only strange residents in the small town of Moonlight, Missouri, she was dead wrong.

Ember has never let a guy past her walls…or the second date. But her most recent mistake, Jack, isn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. And the more insistent he is, the more creeped out Ember gets. The persistent lurking around, the non-stop text messages and phone calls, the gifts she’s never asked for and doesn’t want, the fact she can’t even get a cup of coffee at her favorite coffee shop without him showing up. Those things would be bad enough. But there’s also the fact that every time she looks at him, she smells smoke. And every time he touches her, she feels like she’s on fire—and not in a good way.

Then she meets Nathan Ashley. Unlike Jack, Nathan is everything Ember’s ever wanted in a guy. Tall, muscular, and beautiful in a totally unnatural way, everything about him calls to her. There’s only one problem. He’s kind of dead.

Nathan drags Ember, kicking and screaming, into a world infinitely weirder and crazier than any she ever dreamed existed. But, when he tells her the truth about her stalkerish ex, she realizes she doesn’t have a lot of choices. Because Jack isn’t Jack anymore. He’s been taken over by a demon who has followed her through lifetimes. Nathan, who knows a lot more than he’s willing to tell, decides to take the matter of her safety into his own hands.

Yeah, because it’s every girl’s dream come true to be kidnapped by a vampire.

And because ghosts, demons, and vampires just aren’t enough to make any girl’s life a waking nightmare, Ember’s about to learn a truth she could have done without. The hints of freaky phenomena she’s experienced her whole life are proof of a terrible secret nobody bothered to tell her. She’s a blood witch, a very powerful one. Bound as a child by her grandmother, her memories tampered with for her own good, her abilities have—mostly—remained dormant, but it’s time for her to take her place in the witchy world and learn to harness her power.

With time running out, Ember finds herself faced with the hardest choices of her life. Does she face her demon? Will she give her heart away, or run from the only man she’s ever wanted? And is she strong enough to embrace her powers and face her destiny?
Because, if she’s not, she’s going to be joining her army of the dead a lot sooner than she’d like.

THOUGHTS:

This was a great debut novel from A.J. Myers. The story kept me intrigued and the characters were very interesting. Something Witchy lays a great foundation for a new series and gives us hint where we will go from here. This is a young adult book, so grab a copy for yourself or your favorite teen, or even a copy for each of you.

Ember is brave and clever. Ember is also 18 so we will give her some leeway in the decision making department since we all made stupid decisions at 18 based on pride and embarrassment vs. playing it smart and safe.

Ember is like any other high school senior full the self-doubt and body issues which are a big factor in her relationship issues with Nathan. Ember considers herself too short and too curvy and is unbearably attracted with Nathan, the gorgeous vampire, and although he is flirty and seductive, Ember can’t imagine what interest she may hold for him. Ember believes she could only be a passing entertainment to Nathan and he’ll break her heart.

Although Ember sees ghosts and believes that makes her a freak, Ember is unaware of the supernaturals who also share the earth. Through persistence and a flash of fang, Nathan convinces her that he is a vampire, but Ember refuses to believe that she is a witch.

The only things which caused me annoyance was the fact that one of Nathan’s abilities as a vampire was to read minds. Although he read every single thought that came into Ember’s head, he seems to skip ALL her thoughts pertaining to her feelings for Nathan–since he couldn’t possible feel anything for her, he is a gorgeous vampire and she’d just a gawky teenager, blah, blah, blah, teenage angst… Nathan wants to win Ember’s trust before he confesses all, but he doesn’t realizes that the choices he is making is undermining any trust she has for him? I can understand her teenage issues, but as a 400 plus vampire who could read minds, he should have handled this better.

Understandably, since this was a young adult story, part of the basis for this mixed signals and back and forth is to keep our couple out of bed, but there was so much back and forth, he’s hot, but she’s cold, then she’s all hot and bothered and he’s giving the cold shoulder.

I understand from the publisher information that the demon, Jack, has been trying to get Ember to be his for centuries, and her constant refusal has lead him to kill her over and over and over, with Nathan always coming too late to save her. But, I didn’t feel there was any explanation why Jack was so focused on Ember since it is not her looks as she has looked different in her different reincarnations and I’m not certain whether or not she was a witch in her past lives. So the big question is why was Jack so obsessed with Ember? Hopefully Book #2 will shed more light on what makes Ember sooo special.

Go to our interview with A.J. Myers and she can give us a peek into where the series will go from here.

Favorite Scene:

I felt my mouth pop open as I stared at him, but I couldn’t seem to make it close again. I had never seen anyone so gorgeous in my life. He as tall and muscular, a quality emphasized by the tight black t-shirt he wore. Shaggy brown hair framed a porcelain-pale face that sculptors would probably kill to replicate. He had a straight nose, strong jaw, and full, very soft-looking, lips. Just looking at those lips was enough to make me wonder…

Yeah…oh yeah.

Oh, please turn around! I thought, practically willing him to do it. As far as I could tell, he was a perfect eleven on a scale of one to ten, but I couldn’t be sure until I saw his butt. He didn’t disappoint me, either. I could have sworn I heard him laugh when he turned to look at the damage to the back of his car, but I chalked it up to the lust-fueled fog he had put me in playing tricks with my brain.

Yep, perfect eleven…maybe even a twelve.

Having given me a nice glimpse of his perfect behind, he turned around and looked right at me, and those magnificent lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners, almost like he knew what I was thinking and found it amusing. I wasn’t looking at his lips anymore, though. His eyes were hypnotic. They were beautiful—a brilliant hazel that seemed to glow ever so slightly.

I felt that stare like a physical touch. It slammed into me, making my heart hammer and my skin tingle like I had been electrocuted—only in a very, very, good way. I stood there, unable to move, and watched as he made his way toward me with an almost predatory grace. The closer he got, the more intense the sensations surging through me became.

He stopped less than five feet from me, and I felt something entirely new. It was a ripping sensation. Like something had torn loose inside me, followed by a wave of something I couldn’t name but absolutely loved. I swayed a little as it washed through me. It was the most intense, and possibly the scariest, thing that had ever happened to me. And I wanted it to go on forever.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice so warm, so silky-soft, that I wanted to roll up in it and stay there forever. My eyes went wide, and he smiled at me again and winked.

“Um—I-I’m fine,” I stammered, totally at a loss for words.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You look a little dazed, gorgeous.”

I had officially entered some alternate universe I had no business being in. We’re talking about a guy who looked like he had fallen straight out of heaven or something, and he was calling me gorgeous. I wanted to pinch myself to make sure I hadn’t died in the wreck and landed in some awesome version of the afterlife.