A Review for Anathema by KA Tucker

Posted by Guest Reviewer Melanie
Published Date: July 15th, 2011
Finished Date: December 7th, 2011
Source: For Review from Author
Format: Kindle
Pages: 284
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The Blurb from Goodreads: Evangeline has spent her teenage years in obscurity. Her foster parents have the emotional aptitude of robots and her classmates barely acknowledge her existence. About to turn eighteen and feeling like a social pariah, she is desperate to connect with someone. Anyone.

 When Evangeline meets Sophie after literally stumbling upon her café, she believes she’s found that connection. Willing to do anything to keep it, she accepts a job as Sofie’s assistant and drops everything to fly to Manhattan, where she is thrust into a luxurious world of Prada, diamonds, and limitless cash. With such generosity and kindness, it’s easy for Evangeline to dismiss certain oddities... like Sofie’s erratic and sometimes violent behavior, and the monstrous guard dogs. She’s even willing to dismiss her vivid dreams of mob-style murders, beautiful homeless people living in caves, and white-eyed demons that haunt her each night as figments of her imagination—especially when one of those figments is the gorgeous Caden. When she wakes up with bite marks on her neck, the fairy tale quickly turns into a nightmare. She slowly unravels the mystery surrounding Sofie and friends, and the reality of the bites and the “dreams.” What she discovers is far more mysterious and terrible than anything she could have imagined. In a world where everyone has motive to lie for personal gain, Evangeline must decide which deception is least likely to get her killed.

The Review: Evangeline is a loner having been tossed from one foster parent to another for the last five years following the death of her mother. Lately she has been volunteering at the homeless shelter whilst she looked for a job, Until one day, walking home she stumbles into something, an expensive something and it smashes to pieces. Then she meets that somethings owner who is less than impressed but invites her into her café out of the rain to get herself together. Sofie, the café owner wants recompense and the only thing that Evangeline can think of is to offer to work off the debt . . . slowly. It surprises her when she is taken up on the offer but what is more surprising is the pay and then even more surprising is when she turns up to work the next day to find that Sofie is closing down the café and moving to New York and that she wants to take Evangeline with her. Having accepted, they arrive at their destination and she is treat like a princess rather than an employee but she just goes with the flow . . . .  Then strange things start to happen. The dreams start, but are they really dreams? Every night they come, They seem so real and so do the people she meets in them, especially Caden with his sparkling green eyes and why does she wake up in different clothes and marked from things that happen to her in these dreams? Had she really travelled to another place in time? Everything is so surreal and nothing is as it seems, can Evangeline figure out what is really going on and save herself in the process? And who can she really trust?

To be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to this book, the cover was kind of nice but the blurb didn’t really do it for me so you can imagine my surprise when I became engrossed in it and read it really quickly, so unexpected. It wasn’t predictable in any way and had me questioning everyones motives regarding Evangeline. She was a bit of a flake in the beginning, like a little puppy dog starved of affection and craving some attention from anyone who would give it and that’s how she fell in with Sofie so easily, especially since her mothers death. Sure, she had her doubts but kept her unease to herself and easily talked herself round, that is until she started to understand what was going on and how manipulating people are. Then she started to get a backbone and we start to see the kind of young lady she can blossom into given the things she had gained and what in turn she could lose, making a more determined Evangeline who is starting to learn to fight for what she wants. It was hard to trust any of the other characters, I kept expecting the worst as we are taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions as Evangeline discovers the depths to which some people will go to for what they most desire.

As I said this is a surprisingly good read with twists and turns galore that left me wondering what was coming next, a lot! I like the idea of the different worlds with the different problems and the way the author got that across without overly complicating things, how I had to question everything because I never knew what was coming next and the ending that just left me needing the next book immediately and wondering what the bleep is going to happen next.