Seventeen-year-old Sonia is in her senior year when she realizes that she is even more different from her friends than she thought. One day there’s an incident with her and another student, proving she has the same ability to control people as her mom. Though she has had a few similar experiences before, this incident verifies exactly how different she is.
Things really begin to change when Sonia meets a senior named Anthony. Soon she finds herself consumed by him—which is shocking—because she’s just not one to fall in love. Anthony is handsome and mysterious, but that’s not what drives Sonia crazy. While other guys usually fight for her attention, Anthony doesn’t even give her the time of day. And even stranger yet, her ability to control people doesn’t work on him. Little does Sonia know that he keeps a deep secret too, and that that very secret holds the answer to who she really is.
With only a few weeks left of school, horrible things happen: Three of Sonia’s cousins, living in another state, are killed, and Sonia’s mom vanishes without a trace.
Anthony tells Sonia that her mom has been taken to an invisible island called Wraithsong, and that his mother is the abductor. To save her mom’s life, Sonia is forced to accept Anthony’s help and travels with him to find the island, but when Anthony’s mother discovers they are working against her, she sends someone to kill Anthony and capture Sonia.
We’ve all seen it before, paranormal young adult books that have a otherworldly creature as a main character. Most times you only see Werewolves or vampires and though these go to creatures are great and many authors twist the mythology to their own, there are books that delve into other mythological creatures. WRAITHSONG brings together a little used mythos, Norse, and weaves a coming of age book that centers on the myth of a Huldra.
I honestly had no idea what a Huldra was until I started reading this book. It turns out, they are basically the Norse version of a Siren. Putting that aside, WRAITHSONG is an interesting book that intrigued me.
I love young adult books and any paranormal one at that. The fact that Squires writes about a creature that I never heard of excites me. The main character, Sonia, is a sweet and wonderful girl who doesn’t really stand up for herself for a number of reasons: she’s forbidden to use her Huldra abilities and she honestly doesn’t understand why someone has to be so evil. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand evil. She does. However, she has an outlook that is very similar to mine. She’s optimistic.
I like that she’s an innocent person thrown into a world that turns out to not be foreign to her. Also, if you’re worried that she doesn’t grow, she does by the end of the book. It can be seen earlier than that, but by the end, she is strengthened in her choices and makes a difficult decision.
There is a direct parallel to abusive relationships and racism in the book that ties nicely into a paranormal setting. I love it when authors can weave true to life issues in a paranormal setting and gives the reader more to look at than just the story at hand.
I do wish the writing was a bit more gripping, but I really liked the book nonetheless. The sequel comes out sometime this fall and I will be buying it.
Casia's Corner 