A Review for Echoes Of Angels (Eternity #1) by Devyn Quinn

Posted by Melanie
Release Date: May 31st, 2013
Finished Date: October 1st, 2013

Publishers: MojoCastle Press
Genre: YA Paranormal, Romance
Source: For Review

Format: eBook
Pages: 390

Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US 

Julienne Blackthorne grew up in the school of hard knocks.

Dragged around the country by an unstable mother, she grew up on the fringes of poverty, unloved and unwanted. With the face of an angel and a body made for sin, her dream to reinvent herself in Hollywood goes crushingly awry. Though marriage to her manager leads to minor success as a model and D-list celebrity, her husband’s violent temper and her own crack-cocaine habit can only lead to one thing: disaster. A near brush with death leaves her broke, alone and scarred for life. By the time she emerges from rehab, her life is in ruins, and her soul little more than ashes.

But old bodies will not stay buried, and Julienne is about to learn the truth behind her own lost past. The chance to begin her life over lures her back to the family home her mother abandoned over twenty-one years ago — and straight into the unwelcome embrace of the man Cassandra Blackthorne feared most.

Morgan Saint-Evanston.

Dark. Brooding. Sexy as hell. He’s everything a woman desires, yet his own frightening secrets have tainted his heart and blackened his soul. He is a man Julienne will dare to take as her lover even as he plunges her into an occult realm, where human souls are open barter and swords and sorcery still rule…

The review: Echoes of Angels is a great introduction to the Eternity series by Devyn Quinn. The synopsis says it all as we are introduced to Julienne Blackthorne, as she makes her way back to her ancestral home that her mother had fled  21 years earlier and back into the arms of her grandmother, the only family she has left. Julienne is a recovering drug addict and recovering from her husband’s attempt on her life that has left her with both mental & physical scars, with her life in ruins she takes the only option available to her… even if it means coming face to face with the man who drove her mother away – Morgan Saint-Evanston. All is not as it seems however, the house & residents hold secrets that Julienne is about to discover, putting her life & heart on the line as she becomes embroiled in a destiny far beyond anything she could imagine…. And it is just the beginning.

I really enjoyed this book, it was one of those reads where it grabs your curiosity and doesn’t let go. The characters of the book were so interesting and easy to read and care about, Julienne in particular, she is on the bottom when she arrives at the house, she’s been clean of drugs for a short amount of time and has lost everything, she feels like she owes these people to grant their one request for her to move back home to her family in exchange for them sorting her life out and believe me, it needs sorting. I feel she fit right in when she got there and had an air of dignity about her for all of her flaws & misgivings, she didn’t play ‘the victim’ & got on with it which I thought was a plus to her character. The other main character and enigma is the multi layered personality that is Morgan… he was a hard character to work out, hard to empathise with too but in a tortured past kind of way, where you know something has made him that way and we are waiting to see what Julienne’s influence will have on him. In some ways he is cruel, in others compassionate but always stoic & cold hearted putting on a thick façade so we never really grasp who he is or what he’s about and this only made me that much more inquisitive, I think I’ve only ever read of a character who I couldn’t fathom out, maybe twice. I’ll be very curious to read more about him.

The storyline isn’t fast paced and although that would usually bother me, it totally didn’t here because of the mystery surrounding everyone, that fed the need to turn the page, I wanted – no, needed- to know more & just like Julienne it was all based around Morgan, he was so consuming. Even though the book is actually set in modern day, when they reached the manor, it took on an aged feel, like we went to the past and I liked that. So much of it is focussed on the relationships of the residents of the house, Julienne & her grandmother, Julienne & Morgan, Morgan & Ashleigh and any staff there, which eventually brings out secrets about who they all are – which I really liked. For most of the book, the paranormal element is quite understated, we all know that Morgan is ‘more than human’, I love what he turns out to be, I’ve not read a lot about his particular ‘gifts’  -so again with the curiosity factor- but he isn’t the only one and that element gets stronger and stronger until most of the skeletons are revealed & we are teased with hints of a prophecy. I loved the turn the book took towards the end, as the event that had been building throughout the book came to pass it gave it quite a different feel to the story, sending it in a fantasy direction that I really enjoy and opened up a much larger world to the story along with new friends & enemies which we get a good look at and makes me very excited for book two – Descent of Demons – especially after that ending!