Wednesday 8 August 2012

666 Park Avenue - Gabriella Pierce

Jane thought she was living a fairy tale. Now she has to contend with burgeoning magical powers and a soon-to-be mother-in-law who is a witch ... literally Welcome to New York City, where the socialites are witches.

Jane Boyle has been living a fairy tale. When her boyfriend Malcolm proposes, Jane can't believe her luck and decides to leave her Paris-based job as a fledgling architect and make a new start with him in New York. But when Malcolm introduces Jane to the esteemed Doran clan, one of Manhattan's most feared and revered families, Jane's fairy tale takes a darker turn. Now Jane must struggle with new found magical abilities and the threat of those who will stop at nothing to get them.

Welcome to 666 Park Avenue....


*~*~*

When I first got this book I thought it sounded quite interesting, but being honest, I wasn't hyped as it was an adult book. It was actually a book that has taken 4 months of picking up, putting down and restarting as there was just something not letting me give up on this book, and honestly, I'm glad I kept going!

Jane Boyle meets an extremely attractive art dealer in Paris (where she first lives), and after particularly small worldwind amount of romance over the space of a month of dating he proposes. This is first where I was confused...honestly I wouldn't have accepted after that short time dating (neither would most women I feel!), and this feeling kept with me. Jane keeps wondering what is going on, and I just wanted to keep pointing out she got there herself! This does get made clearer towards the second half of the book, but I spent the first half thinking that Jane was some head over heals in love school girl (which is something I expect from my YA reading, not so much from adult literature). With this then she suddenly picks up her life in Paris and moves to New York to live in his mansion/house/family home, and again something that came across odd to me.

Then we meet his mother...and boy she scares me! I don't think witch is the word to describe her...some other word very very similar would work though, and I felt the character was written brilliantly as it was the perfect amount of "witchiness" (again different word...but since this is a book about witches it works well!) without being over the top, which can happen far too often in some books. As the book went on it dragged for me. It was brilliantly written but I just couldn't get past certain character flaws within Jane and Malcolm and their relationship and how he just kept vanishing. Also be warned there are quite a few graphic sex scenes at the start of the book and then a few towards the middle, which some people may not approve of.

As I mentioned, towards the end of the book this is all explained, but if it had hinted earlier to what was happening then I would have been more interested in the book and finished it sooner! At first, I will admit, I thought it was bad character writing that put me off but once all the witchiness was explained by Malcolm (unfortunately around chapter 37) the little light bulb went off in my head and I began to love the book.

The book ended at a nice point where it is open to so many different opportunities and directions it could go in, and for that reason I am looking forward to reading the second book, just to see what happens and how Jane begins to learn more about her family.


666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce is the first in a trilogy, and was released in the UK on 2nd August 2012. I received my copy from Canvas publishing in exchange for an honest review. 

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