Monday, December 13, 2010

Book Review: One Hundred Candles by Mara Purnhagen


Title: One Hundred Candles (Past Midnight #2)
Publisher: Harlequin
Release Date: 03/01/2011
ISBN: 037321023X









Ever wonder what it might be like to talk to ghosts? How about being part of a family business where the goal is to scientifically disprove the existence of said ghosts? If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like then this book is for you.


I’ve opened a door that cannot be closed.

It’s taken a long time for me to feel like a normal teenager. But now that I’m settled in a new school, where people know me as more than Charlotte Silver of the infamous Silver family paranormal investigators, it feels like everything is falling into place. And what better way to be normal than to go on a date with a popular football star like Harris Abbott? After all, it’s not as if Noah is anything more than a friend...

But my new life takes a disturbing turn when Harris brings me to a party and we play a game called One Hundred Candles. It seems like harmless, ghostly fun. Until spirits unleashed by the game start showing up at school. Now my friends and family are in very real danger, and the door that I’ve opened into another realm may yield deadly consequences.


While I liked the first volume in this series, I have to admit that Purnhagen definitely kicked it up a notch in this book. Charlotte has a lot to deal with- her crush on Noah seems to be going nowhere & the supernatural event in the previous book is causing lots of problems between her parents. (Her mom is more sympathetic to the supernatural, her father still isn't.) Many books in this vein have the heroine hiding events like this from her family, so when you do get books like this it's interesting to read how it affects a family- especially one that bases their whole career around debunking stuff like this.

The pacing in this book is much better than in the previous book & now that the groundwork has been laid, we get to see much more character development & supernatural spookies. The only downfall is that some readers might be able to guess at what's going to happen about halfway through the book, but odds are that they'll be having so much fun that they really won't care about that.

Readers won't have to have read the previous book in the series to know what is going on in this book, but it'll help. The previous events are summarized briefly in this book, so they won't feel too left out in the dark. This really is forming into a promising series & while it isn't going to knock Soul Screamers out of its spot as my #1 favorite UF teen series, it's up there in my top 5.

(ARC provided by NetGalley)

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