Dark Designs

*Book source ~ ARC

My review is voluntary and honest.

Dark Designs

Stefanie Spangler

7 June 2017

Fantasy | Suspense

185 Pages

My Rating ~ 1 bite and a nibble

Ivy and Violet Grant are twins abandoned by their mother at a very young age. Their maternal grandparents raise them since no one knows who their father is. Well, maybe except their mom, but she never said. One day a farmhand named Charlie Logan makes an extremely inappropriate move on 8-yr-old Ivy and Grandpa Jack takes a pitchfork to him, telling him to leave or die. So Charlie leaves, but his obsession for Ivy never dies. When he finds a dark book of magic during a burglary, he decides to finally get his wish: Ivy as his. However, it isn’t until years later and Ivy and Violet have since been taught by their grandmother how to use the magic they were born with. But will it be enough to combat the evil that Charlie conjures?

It’s a rare book by Red Adept Publishing that disappoints me, but this is one of them. It has a decent premise with magic handed down through maternal bloodlines and an obsessive villain that gets his hands on a dark book of shadows. However, it isn’t until nearly the end it starts to deliver, but then it just as quickly deflates again like a premature ejaculation. The pacing is unbearably slow especially in the beginning, the tone is inconsistent, the characters are flat, Ivy is just plain TSTL, Charlie is a cardboard villain and frankly a village idiot, and there are inconsistencies galore. Plus, this is supposed to be a book about magic and the part it plays in the Grants’ lives and yet there’s basically bupkis about it. I like my fantasy books to have more than just some token magic. I think this book was trying to be a suspenseful fantasy, but fell far short in both areas. I could not stop rolling my eyes, so it was impossible to fall headlong into the story. I like Violet (most of the time), Kevin, and the sheriff. That’s about it. If there is going to be a book 2, I’m honestly not interested.