Tempted by Evil - Shannon Morton & Amber Lynn Natusch

"He eyed me wildly from the floor below, and I watched as an unmistakable shift occurred in his gaze―concern bled to ambivalence, then nothing at all. His expression was cold as stone. Within seconds I was sprawled on the floor, pressed heavily against it by the weight of his body.
Escape was futile.
I could not fight the Shadow away."


A sheltered girl.
The perfect boy.
A mysterious stranger.
Random messages delivering a sobering prophecy plague Aspen's existence. With every curious encounter, her sanity waivers further. Before long, Aspen finds herself balancing the fate of humanity on her shoulders, until a single act turns her world upside down. She finds herself alone, isolated from those she thought she could trust.
Alone to damn the world.

First let me say this is definitely on my list of favorite covers! Is that because she has red hair? Probably.  But that’s the best part about all of this being subjective, I can love this cover just because she’s a redhead!

But why does the redhead have to be potentially crazy?!? J

“My redheaded temper has gotten me into trouble yet again.” – I know how she feels, mine is always getting me into trouble too!  

I made a list of authors attending the Boston Author Event whose books I hadn’t read yet.  When I looked at the list of books and realized two of them wrote this book, it was a no brainer.  I love a good paranormal story, the main character was a redhead and I hit two authors in one read, win-win-win!  

 

I really wanted to love this book.  And it definitely had the potential.  Good vs. Evil, humanity to potentially save or find out you’re really just not all there upstairs.  Sounds exciting… 

I loved the idea of this story… Aspen, a girl who is orphaned as a baby, and raised by nuns.  Julian, the cute guy that wants to help take care of her when, at 18 she has nowhere to go - who has a seemingly amazing family except his overprotective sister.  And then Merrick, a mysterious, sexy guy who shows up at a lot of the same places she goes, and who you can’t quite get a handle on through most of the book.  Love triangle perhaps?  

In addition to the underlying potential love triangle, there are all these strange messages that Aspen seems to get throughout the story.  Talking about the end of humanity and evil overtaking good.  They kept me interested to see what was going to happen. 

For most of the story I read it thinking, this is okay, I’m not falling head over heels like I’d hoped to, but I like it enough to keep reading.  I knew the other two books of the trilogy hadn’t been written/released yet but I wasn’t too upset about it thinking I wasn’t really reading as voraciously as I have other books and I could wait if I decided to continue at all.  It’s not that it’s a bad story, it just felt a little flat to me at times.   

That was until I got to the very last chapter of this book.  I’m not going to pretend like I couldn’t see the writing on the wall and figure out what was going on previously, because it was fairly obvious to me (with one exception), but it’s this very last chapter, hell it may even be the very last sentence that hooked me and will get me to read the next book.    

I’m looking forward to seeing if the momentum built in the last chapter of this book will spill over into the next book.  I can definitely say for book 2, I’m in! Bring on the crazy redhead…oh, well, the other crazy redhead!