A Review for The Emerald Talisman by Brenda Pandos

Posted by Donna
Published Date: March 24th, 2010
Finished Date: October 14th, 2011
Source: For Review 
Format: Paperback 
Pages: 280
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The Blurb from Goodreads: To be normal, sixteen-year-old Julia Parker would shed her empathic gift in a second. Life has been difficult since her mother's mysterious disappearance ten years earlier - an event she witnessed, but can't remember. Julia's situation becomes more complicated after a near death experience from a blood thirsty stalker. As high school students go missing it is clear there is a connection to her own experience--past and present. Someone has to stop the madness and a chance encounter with a creepy psychic foretells that only Julia is the key to stopping the madness, but it may require the life of the one she loves.
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The Review: The Emerald Talisman is a book I had wanted to read for a while, so when I managed to get a copy for review I was over the moon so let me tell you what I thought. 

Sixteen year old Julia Parker has a secret; she has an empathic gift and doesn’t really like it. Life has never been easy with her gift but more because of her mother’s mysterious disappearance 10 years earlier, which Julia witnessed but doesn’t remember.

When Julia’s life is in danger from a blood thirsty stalker, her whole world changes when she is saved by the handsome Nicholas, a guy she can’t help feel for. But somehow Nicholas seems to know what’s going on with the disappearance’s of some of the high school students and Julia realises she’s in deeper than she once fought.

The Emerald Talisman was a good start to a promising series which had an interesting storyline and likable characters. While I liked the basic storyline, I felt the story lacked. Firstly, I felt the story took quite a while to get going and while I was intrigued in the general plot, I did find myself losing interest before the story really got going. Secondly, I didn’t really feel the connection between our main characters; Nicholas and Julia. Their relationship felt pretty forced because of how quickly things moved and Julia was quite obsessive within the first few chapters. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a fast paced romance but for me this was too fast. But, despite these two points I still enjoyed the over all story once it got going. I found myself enjoying the book more once I got past the first 125 pages and I enjoyed how the story developed. I really liked how Julia’s gift was tied into the story and I’m eager to find out more. I also especially liked Phil as a character and thought he bought a nice amount of excitement to the story. Even though the end of the book was tied up pretty nicely, I still felt there were a few unanswered questions and I find myself looking forward to the next book in the series.

Overall, The Emerald Talisman was a book I was glad to have read and I think many people will enjoy this book. I would totally recommend this to Vampire lovers.

A huge thank you to Brenda Pandos for giving me the opportunity to review this book.