The accident season is set in Ireland during October, just before Halloween. It is centred around a family and some of their close friends as they navigate their way through what they call The Accident Season. This is when, in the month of October, every year they are more accident prone than usual and their accidents are more serious than they are throughout the rest of the year.
This particular accident season is predicted by Bea, the witchy best friend of the accident prone family, to be the worst one yet. In the past there were deaths of close family members along with many serious injuries to those who survived but the one that the characters experience in the book is meant to be worse.
The book on a whole is full of mystery and secrets. The characters are all hiding things from one another and are all trying to solve the mystery that is the accident season. The story is full of twists and turns and questions which get answered in the final few chapters of the book.
Overall I found that this book was very easy to read and the story was very interesting. It did lack excitement in some areas but it definitely made up for it in others. Moïra Fowley-Doyle is amazing at describing the characters' surrounding to the point where you lose yourself in it. You really do seem to get lost in this book, in more ways than one, but I think that adds to the mystery and atmosphere that the book creates.
I was able to guess a lot of the twists in this book but that may be because it reminded me of We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. The secrets and the deceit were all very similar but I didn't mind that. It was good to see how two authors can write about two different plots, both containing accidents, and weave similar twists into them but still allowing the book to be unique in its own right, such as the fantasy element that Cara brought into the world of chaos that she was living in.
I did enjoy this book and loved how Moïra described and explained things. I think this is a book that I could read again too because of all the different elements. I could probably pick up more of the smaller details in the book now knowing all of the aspects of the story.
The Sin Eater's Daughter is not a book I had heard anything about when I picked it up. It was almost a relief having heard nothing about it because it meant that this was a book I was going into with an open mind.
When I first picked up this book I was very intrigued about the story. It is about a girl who is taken to live in the palace under the persona of the reincarnated daughter of two Gods that are worshiped in this particular kingdom. Under this persona, which she herself believes to be true, she becomes the personal assassin of the Queen for those who commit treason. There is one twist to her assassinations though, she kills them simply by touching them... or so she believes. The book follows Twylla as she learns the truth about the Queen, her true intentions and the truth about herself and her abilities.
Before being taken into the palace however, she was the Sin Eater's Daughter (hence the name of the book). The Sin Eater is a woman who comes to eat away all of the sins of a deceased person. The sins are represented by different foods that the Sin Eater must consume in order for the deceased to "move on to the next world". Being the Sin Eater's Daughter has some set backs for Twylla as she automatically associates certain foods with the sins they represent.
The story also tells a love story. Throughout the book Twylla slowly falls in love with her new guard who knows secrets about Twylla that not even she knows. The love story is quite cliched in a way that Twylla does not seem to like her new guard at all until something happens and she begins to realise he is not as bad as he seems. That is until the concluding action when Twylla discovers the truth behind his actions and the betrayal of her trust.
With their being almost two parts to this story it is quite difficult to understand and follow on occasion. The stories never truly seemed to merge until the last few chapters when the story began to pick up a bit. There also seemed to be a fair amount of information that wasn't all that necessary when it came to telling the story. That being said the book was incredibly well written and Melinda Salisbury did a really good job with the creation of this world and the characters in it. I will definitely be picking up the next book to this one just to find out where Melinda takes the story and the characters next.
This book is phenomenal! I thought the other books in this world were good when I read them but this one takes it to a whole knew level.
From the very start of this book we are thrust into the world of Shadowhunters and Demons and Warlocks and Werewolves and Vampires...the list goes on. The action is introduced right from the beginning and continues all the way to the end. Lady Midnight is full of mystery, romance, fighting and lots and lots of plot twists.
I loved getting to know all of the characters that were introduced in City of Heavenly Fire in more depth and getting to see how the Dark War really effected them.
I thought that it was really interesting to see the way that Julian had adopted the role of their father. I liked how it wasn't an immediate thing, that it developed over time with him knowing that they needed someone who would look after them like that. I love the different relationships he has with each of his siblings and how well he knows each of them individually. I also loved to read about how much he adored them.
I loved learning more about Emma too. It was interesting to see how the death of her parents fueled everything that she did. It fueled her desire for revenge and it fueled how deeply she cared for the Blackthorns. It also fueled her impulsiveness and her carelessness, much like Jace from The Mortal Instruments series. The deaths of her parents, along with the events of the Dark War, very much shaped her into this kick-ass Shadowhunter.
It was good to get to know the rest of the Blackthorn children better too. They were all so young during City of Heavenly Fire that they were almost pushed to the side a little. None of them were old enough to fight or fully understand what was going on so nobody really considered how everything would effect them. Now they are all older and three of them are teenagers they understand everything better.
I think the Blackthorn who the war has most noticeably effected is Tavvy. Though he was only two years old during the war, and his siblings tried to hide it from him the best that they could, he still wakes up, five years later, having nightmares of it. He doesn't seem to understand a lot of what is going on around him but I think that is from his siblings still treating him as the child he was during the war. I think this is most noticeable when he solved the Lady Midnight riddle with his children's book. It was never something that crossed the minds of the older children so it was not something they thought to check.
The main premise of this book is the hunt to discover a murderer but in the background Emma is also searching for the person who killed her parents. Her parents were believed to have been killed by Sebastian Morgenstern during the Dark War but Emma has never believed that story. She knew that something more sinister had happened to her parents. As it turns out she was right. At the end of the book when the young group of Shadowhunters tracks down the murderer, they also unknowingly track down Emma's parents' killer. While confronting the killer, Emma learns that her parents deaths were the result of a failed experiment to see if a spell worked. If anything this left Emma feeling more heartbroken than ever. Her parents deaths had been the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Another underlying story is that of Mark Blackthorn, the half-faerie, half-shadowhunter boy. At the beginning of City of Heavenly Fire Mark Blackthorn is taken by Faerie and forced to become part of the Wild Hunt. At the beginning of this book, Mark is given back to his family to help them with their investigations of the killings. All the way through the book Mark struggles to readjust to the Shadowhunter world. He cannot decide if he truly belongs with his family of Shadowhunters or with the Faeries of the Wild Hunt. He is pressure by both sides to be part of their world and both sides have things that he wants. Through the whole book Mark refuses to have ruins put upon him but when he finally decides that he is a Shadowhunter he asks Julian to give them to him for the sake of saving Tavvy.
Not only do I love the world that Cassandra Clare has created with The Shadowhunter Chronicles but I love how she incorporates certain topics into her books without making them an issue. She has written about different sexual orientations all the way through the chronicles but in this book I noticed that she added in a little part about mental illness and learning difficulties. She wrote about how those who had them were treated differently than everyone else for it and how it was just that little bit harder for them to do things. They are very much ignored by the Clave and their families feel that it is necessary to protect them from the names and the humiliation they could face if their differences are discovered. I like the way Cassie described it and explained it with relevance to the story she was telling. She wrote in a way that drew your attention to it but also did not take you away from the story.
Also, the story at the end with all of the original characters in it absolutely made my day. I am so happy that Cassie added in an extra little bit to allow readers to find out what happened with all of the characters after the Dark War and after the stories in the Tales of the Shadowhunter Academy. It was good to know that they were all happy and enjoying life together with minimal disturbances.
This book well and truly left me with a book hangover. I never wanted the story to end and as soon as it did I just wanted to have the next book in my hands ready to continue on. This book hangover has now turned into a book slump to the point where nothing I read seems to keep my attention. I guess that is just the sign of a good book and an even better writer to leave you longing after characters after you have turned the last page.
