Finished Burn Mark by Laura Powell. I received a copy of this from the publisher on Netgalley.
The premise behind this book is simple: what if there really WERE witches? And what if, as a result, the witch trials never stopped?
In this reality, there are basically two factions—those that abide by the law and those that don’t. Lucas is the latest (hopefully) in a long line of Inquisitors. For generations, his family has hunted unregistered witches and made sure that they don’t harm others. Glory is essentially his exact opposite: the latest in a long line of unregistered witches. She doesn’t trust Inquisitors at all—and why should she? They killed her family.
Unforutnately, they’re going to have to learn to trust each other. Lucas has just developed fae powers and thus is ineligible for Inquisitor duty. He can still serve his country but he’s going to have to deal with a lot of fear and hatred. And he’s going to have to work with Glory.
This book has such a fascinating premise, but the execution didn’t quite live up to my expectations. This is a long book (400 pages and change, according to Goodreads) but it seems like most of the action is in the last hundred or so pages. (That’s a guess; I read this on my Kindle.) That’s perfectly fine; I don’t mind a book that takes a while to pay off and there are several books that have the last hundred pages be the best part of the book (We Need to Talk About Kevin comes immediately to mind).
One thing I do appreciate is that each of the two narrators, Lucas and Glory, have ample reason to hate the other side but each manage to overcome that hatred. I’m a big believer in similarities trumping differences.
Fans of paranormal YA will probably enjoy this book, but others might find nothing new here.
