Review: Shadows - Amy Meredith

Fifteen-year-old Eve Evergold is cute, sassy and enjoying a busy social life.  What she doesn't know yet is that someone close to her is an evil demon that only she has the supernatural power to defeat.

She needs to work out who it is - and fast.  Because although there's something very attractive about the dark side ... dating a demon?  Pure hell.

Dark Touch Series:
Shadows
The Hunt
Fever (2011)

I can't find a website for Amy Meredith but you can visit her author page on Goodreads by clicking here

Review:
Eve is 15 years old and loves nothing more than shopping with her best friend Jess and hanging out with her friends.  She has no idea that she is the descendant of a powerful witch and about to come into powers of her own.  With nobody to guide her about how her powers work it is up to Eve to figure things out and stop the demons that are currently making themselves at home in her town.

From the cover I was expecting quite a creepy paranormal read but Shadows didn't quite manage to live up to my expectations.  Eve and Jess are both fashion obsessed spoiled rich kids who have massive allowances and credit cards.  They spend all of their time shopping for designer clothes & redoing their lip gloss.  How many 15 year olds do you know with their own credit cards and enough of an allowance to buy Jimmy Choos?  I'm sure there are some out there but certainly none I've ever come across and I found myself having to work really hard to find anything I could relate to in the characters.

They did start to grow on me by the end of the book but they aren't my favorite characters in a young adult series.  One thing I did like about them was their supportive friendship, I've been seeing too many stories where the best friend is actually someone I wouldn't want as an enemy so it was refreshing to see friends that obviously cared for each other even though only one of them has supernatural abilities.  The banter between the 2 friends was fun to read but it didn't quite fit in with the story - when your town is being attacked by demons who are slowly putting all of your friends in hospital I think you'd put your shopping addiction to one side while you dealt with the problem.  Especially if you were the only person with the power to stop them!

Eve's powers are interesting and I'm curious to see if she develops any further talents throughout the series.  However, I did find it more than a little strange that Eve wasn't more worried when she started having sparks fly out of her hands, even her friends took it completely in their stride as if it wasn't at all unusual.  The storyline is quite slow to start off with but does pick up pace towards the end of the book where I found myself enjoying it more.  I figured out who the demon was from very near the beginning so I found the plot a little to predictable and would have liked more of a mystery to get my teeth into.

Shadows is a quick and easy read and one that I would probably recommend more for younger teenagers.  I am curious to see where author Amy Meredith takes this series so I will try the next book but it isn't one that will jump to the top of my to read pile.

Source: Library

Other reviews of this book:
Chrissie's Corner
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