Fated
Alyson Noel
St. Martin’s Griffin, May 22 2012, $18.99
ISBN: 9780312664855

Daire Santos struggles with being different. Animals follow her while crows mock her. Glowing strangers stalk her. Finally there is the boy with the blue eyes who stars in her dreams. Her widow mom Jennika is beside herself with worry. However, not as much as Daire’s paternal grandmother Paloma Santos who knows the danger to the last of her line.

Sent to visit her grandma in Enchantment, New Mexico, Paloma explains to Daire that like her and her late dad, she is a Soul Seeker who travels between the mundane world of the living and the surreal world of the dead. Fated to either save or destroy the world of the living, Daire trains to control her paranormal skills. However, as her grandma mentors her, she adapts reasonably well until she meets Dace, the star of her dreams. Although attracted to him even before they met, she wonders if he is her soulmate or her Judas.

The first Soul Seekers urban fantasy is a superb thriller starring a “troubled” young lady who learns she holds the fate of the world in her hands. The key to this absorbing tale is the heroine who makes the Noel mythos seems genuine as she enters the underworld in a soul searching rescue mission while wondering whom does she trust. Filled with twists, this is a winning opening act.

Harriet Klausner