Secrets, Lies, and Love

Betrayal

Written by: Mayandree Michel

Released: March 26, 2011 by Mayandree Michel

Summary: Where there is love and power, there is always... betrayal.

At seventeen, Cordelia is an ordinary teen with an extraordinary and frightening secret. A secret that induces vivid dreams which she not only experiences true love, but crippling fear while barely escaping with her life each night.

After a life altering event, Cordelia has an unexpected encounter with Evan, the mysterious boy from her dreams, who reveals who and what she is – a descendant of the Greek gods. At that moment everything she knows of her world is a lie, and she must leave the present and go into the past to assume the role she was put on this earth for – safeguarding her ancient empire amidst evil forces that toil hastily to destroy it.

In a race against time, Cordelia must decide if she is truly a part of this dangerous world, or risk defying the gods, and ultimately lose the boy who has put a claim on her heart.

Ok, I’m going to be honest – I wasn’t fully sucked into this novel. I’m going to blame it on two things though. First, since I read the online version that Goodreads is currently offering (the novel in its apparent completion) I had to read it on my computer screen which started to give me a horrible headache, which caused me to skip over large pieces of the plot in order to get to the end. The second reason is that I just don’t think that I was in the mood to read a paranormal novel like this one. And I’m going to add in that since the screen was giving me a headache, I was in no frame of mind to keep characters and details in proper order.

However, there was just something that made me want to read it. The cover alone was enough to get me intrigued and I’ll admit that I wanted to know just what it was all about. But, I don’t know, it also just started to seem like a whole mish-mash of paranormal subjects thrown together into one large stewing pot and the end result was this novel – which is both good and bad. Good because it offers a lot of action with the gods, vampires, werewolves, secrets, lies, murder, conspiracy, and let’s not forget all sorts of romance. Bad because at times it felt overdone and I just wanted things to be simpler.

Admittedly, since I skimmed the vast majority of this novel, I know that I missed out on a lot – but by reading the final “chapter” (don’t let those ‘next chapter’ buttons fool you – they go for a lot more than just one) and intermittent pieces between I was able to get the gist of what was going on.

I think that if I was ever able to come across a paperback copy of this novel that I would read it again and give it more of a fair shot. I did enjoy the idea and several of the concepts used were relatively undone (meaning I’ve never come across them before). I think that this novel has great potential for someone who would have more patience than I do and especially for someone who could read it not on their computer screen.

I’m going to give this novel a 6/10 and I recommend anyone who thinks this would interest them to give it a chance.