Book Review: Lunula by Alyssa Auch

Title: Lunula

Author: Alyssa Auch

Genre: YA Fantasy

Age Group: Young Adults

Rating: 4 stars

Purchase: Amazon, B&N

Review copy provided by Enchanted Book Promotions in exchange for an honest review.

The witch knows he will hunt her.

If history repeats itself, as it always does, Wynn will have no choice but to cross paths with her feared counterpart, the warlock. If given the chance, he would kill Wynn, absorbing her aura and obtaining ultimate power. In a desperate attempt to outrun destiny, Wynn moves from place to place, hoping to stray from the map laid out by the Fates. But by chance, on an urgent errand for Queen Alexandria herself, Wynn finds she has fallen into the hands of the one man she so hopelessly fled from. Now his captive, Wynn must guard her secret and that of her kingdom, or risk bringing forth a dark age not seen in hundreds of years.

Lunula started out a bit slow. Main character Wynn is stuck in a dungeon somewhere, but manages to escape using her abilities. Once she’s free again, we find out more about Wynn, and turns out she’s a witch. Not just a witch, because in her world, there’s only one witch and one warlock every one hundred years, and they’re sworn enemies. Wynn has spent her entire life trying to escape her destiny, but when she’s sent on an urgent errand for none other than the Queen, she finds out destiny is not that easily escaped.

I don’t want to give too much away, because the book was filled with pleasant, unexpected turns and twists that really kept things intriguing. Once you think you can predict what’ll happen next, something else happens, and then you’re lost again. Wynn was a lovely character to read about. She has plenty of flaws, the most prominent one being her stubbornness. I also liked her evil counterpart, Gethin. Whenever these two characters spoke to each other, there was so much underlying tension and so many snappy comments that it made for very enjoyable dialogues.

My primary pet peeve with the book however, was the beginning. It all started out rather slow, and the world building wasn’t all that original. It had some original elements, but not enough to completely convince me, hence the 4 instead of 5 star rating.

As far as the plot and characters were concerned though, the author did an amazing job. The writing itself was great as well, although sometimes there was telling instead of showing, but it didn’t happen all that often.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait for the sequel!