Book of the Moment: Balefire by Cate Tiernan

Paperback: 974 pages

                                                     Publisher: Razorbill

Seventeen-year-old Thais Allard never knew about her sister-or her legacy-until her father died. Now Thais has been sent to live in New Orleans, where she meets her identical twin, Clio Martin, and learns that they both possess powerful magick flowing in their blood.

It's not an easy discovery for either sister. While Thais struggles to unlock the magick within her, fiery Clio must learn to share the spotlight with her newfound twin. Together, they are capable of greater magick than they realize - and there are those who will stop at nothing to ensure that they don't live to reach their full potential.

~Goodreads

The reason why this book caught my eye was because of the amazing cover. I love the color of the background and the two girls that are on the cover makes you want to pick it up and see what they are all about! This is probably the longest book I've read, being  974 pages so I wanted to challenge myself! And it was an interesting experience doing so!

This book is unlike any other YA book I have read. It's more mature than most books and very different from the usual boy meets girl, lovey dovey, or paranormal scene. Sure there is a lot of romance but it is so different from any other types of books. I like how the main characters were twins but they were polar opposites of each other. Thais (which is pronounced Tye-ees) is sort of the shy girl from the pair and more grounded. However Clio is a completely different story! She is confident, crazy, and a wee bit arrogant. But she is also really strong so personally, I liked Clio more than Thais. I can just relate to Clio more than Thais and I love when I can do that when I read a book.

I think the concept of witches was also really cool. This book has a very urban background because the setting is in New Orleans, so the witchcraft was sort of laid back and something you could see any day. It was definitely no Hogwarts! It was instead very realistic and something that seemed like could really happen. There are real life situations mixed with unimaginable things but yet it somehow works into a concept that is very real.

The romance between the twins and the Luc though pisses me off a little. Luc is a total jerk yet the twins somehow still like the guy. Luc was definitely not my favorite love interest. However, Richard (pronounced Ree-shard) was definitely hot. Sure he is arrogant and a little weird but at least he has personality! Luc just seemed too good to be true or just not real and something of a dream guy that wishes to do everything you want. But Richard had character and I loved it!

Some complaints though was that I hated the character Daedalus's point of view in the book. I thought it was unnecessary and I merely skipped through the pages where he was concerned. There were a lot of pages though that were super boring that sometimes I just skimmed over them. But those were usually the 3rd person point of view of some minor character. But other than that, this book wasn't that bad!

I recommend this to people who want something fresh to read with a bit of darkness and mystery mixed in!

I give it a 3 out 5 CHEWS!

Does this sound good? Buy it from your local bookstore!