Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: A creative and unique world that is worth a look at, but the climactic events happen in the middle which make the rest of the story feel like filler.

Opening Sentence: Yes! Cara Wallace thought after she’d released her banshee cry.

The Review:

Saving Her Destiny is a paranormal romance that is set on a mystical island, Avalon, which is a safe-haven for a lot of the world’s paranormal beings. The world is creative and unique. The writing style is fun and creative and also quite steamy where it needed to be.

Cara Wallace is half merrow (mermaid)/half banshee. As a part of her heritage her scream foretells the death of a merrow. In order for herto warn them of the impending death, she has to swim to their kingdom underwater to deliver the scream. The merrow half of her lets herswim to that depth but she can’t stay there too long. Cara is also forced to stay on Avalon because she needs to be close to the merrow kingdom if she gets a scream.

Duncan Molar is an ex-fairy godmother. (Although I’m surprised he wasn’t a tooth fairy with his last name.) Instead he works with the Fairy-In-Distress team helping to save supernaturals who are in dire need. He once saved Cara and since then has always found time in his day to be around his friend, especially under the disguise of training her telepathy powers.

Saving Her Destiny does have time jumps, especially at the beginning. The story starts when she is fifteen and needs to be rescued by Duncan. Then it jumps again to show how her and Duncan’s relationship has evolved over the years before she is kidnapped and her life is on the line with a scream that could kill her.

Cara believes that her life is always destined to be lived on the island of Avalon. She can never dare to venture very far if a scream comes along so she spends a lot of time daydreaming about leaving and seeing the world. She is a bit of a free spirit even though she believes this. She is quite calm and levelheaded because she never quite freaks out in the face of death even when she is pretty sure that she is a goner. I did like Cara, even though in the end I thought she was a bit selfish and bratty towards Duncan. She was also a little too trusting of people she really shouldn’t have been.

Duncan is quite the heartthrob fairy. He dropped everything to try and find Cara. He even tried to make her feel better when everything looked bleak. He was even willing to die with her. Duncan is older than Cara, by about 300 years! At first that was an issue, but the years passed and it wasn’t so much of an issue.

My only issue with Saving Her Destiny is that all the major stuff happens halfway through the story so the rest of it is pretty anti-climactic. With that much story left I was waiting for something else major to happen and it never did, even the dramatic reappearance was kind of like “Oh, hi…I’m back”. It really felt like a huge chunk of this story was left out.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the beginning half of this novel. I would love to check out another book in this world to see more about how it works. I was surprised to find out this is a spin-off series and am excited to get another look into this world.

Notable Scene:

“Banshees release screams. That’s what they do. They can’t shut them down… That goes against their very nature!”

Tobin glanced at her. “It is very rare, but yes, it can happen.”

“You’re sure,” Duncan whispered.

“It’s in the book. Of course it can happen,” Tobin said.

“Just because it’s in this damn mandate doesn’t mean—“ Reese snapped.

Duncan cut him off. “Can she get it back?”

“It doesn’t say,” Tobin said. He glanced at Cara, and the dark look on his face seemed a bit too much like a doctor delivering a death sentence. “I’m sorry.”

“So I will no longer be able to speak?” Cara asked, the idea strangling her thoughts.

Tobin closed the book. “It doesn’t look like you will be able to again. Unless you find some way to release the hold on your voice.”

She’d never be able to speak again. Never be able to talk. To release a cry? A powerful grief flooded her, rivaling the pain of the scream that begged to get out of her.

“So she’s just going to die? Explode?” Duncan asked, his face stoney white. His fingeres held hers, tense and hard. Or maybe that was her squeezing his fingers.

FTC Advisory: Candice Gilmer/Samhain Publishing provided me with a copy of Saving Her Destiny. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )