Maiden
Teresa A. Harrison
(The Lightwalker Series, #1)
Published by: Acorn Publishing
Publication date: October 13th 2018
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Marta and Jayme are childhood friends with different beliefs. Marta dreams of becoming a healer. Jayme has been schooled by the black-coats, a group of priests who claim women are inferior, and he fears Marta is jeopardizing her eternal future.
Despite a heated debate over Marta’s soul, Jayme betrays her to the priests. The consequences of this betrayal change Marta’s life forever and sends Jayme on his own journey.
After a brutal massacre, Marta awakens deep in the forest overcome with grief for her lost sisters, but the world will not let her rest. The tragedy has changed her. She hears the call of nature, eventually steering her toward a small cottage in the wilderness. There she learns of nature’s magic and what it means to be a LightWalker. The path is there for her to follow. If she’s strong enough to embrace it…
My Review
Marta believes in the old religion of her people, but her best friend Jayme has been converted by the new group of priests who have come into the area. He believes that the old ways were wrong and that his god will punish Marta if she doesn’t change. Then he finds out that she is going to be participating in one of the old rituals, and he decides to tell his priest to break it up. He thinks that the priest is just going to warn the villagers not to do it again, but he has a bad feeling and decides to follow the soldiers that the priest sends. To his horror, people are being killed left and right, and he has to save Marta. Soon, he is swept into a world that goes against everything he has been trained to believe in, and Marta is in the one place where she feels she belongs.
This wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, but it was amazing in a different way. I wasn’t sure if we would get to see that much about Jayme after he nearly got Marta killed at the start of the novel, but he definitely wasn’t forgotten. Just because he was on the wrong path at the start of the book didn’t mean that he stayed on that path for the rest of the novel. He had to reconcile the innocent deaths with himself, and then he was able to help Marta.
Marta ended up being even more important than she thought she would be. I won’t spoil anything, but the book only starts with Jayme saving her. She learns and grows a lot throughout the course of this book. Jayme does grow, but he has to get over what he did at the start of the book before he could start to grow. There was a lot of character development, but I think that Jayme had the most extreme development compared to Marta.
I also like the fact that this story wasn’t focusing on romance. Marta and Jayme had chemistry from the start of the story, but it wasn’t the main focus on the novel. The two were on a spiritual journey, not a romantic journey.
The plot moved smoothly through this entire novel, and I couldn’t put it down when I started it even though it was late at night and I was exhausted. There was only one slow down in the middle, and then it picked up the pace again on the way to a strong ending.
I would recommend this book to lovers of upper YA/NA fantasy novels.
I received an advance copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Author Bio:
Teresa Harrison grew up in Decatur, Illinois, and graduated from Eureka College with a BA in Speech and Theatre. She has a son and daughter-in-law and now two beautiful grandchildren.
She met her husband, Glenn, while on a spiritual journey to Sedona, AZ. They realized they had something special, but they lived on opposite edges of North America. Two years later, she joined Glenn in Southern California.
Teresa has been studying spiritual topics for nearly 40 years and is a Reiki Master, a Breathwork Facilitator, an herbalist and teacher. She has studied Universal Laws, Reincarnation, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation and many other spiritual topics.
Teresa has been reading and telling stories her whole life, and now she has finally written one of them down.
GIVEAWAY!
This sounds like a fund and entertaining read! Great review! 🙂
Thanks for hosting. Looks like a good book.
It definitely was. Thanks for commenting!