Review and Giveaway: Pledged by Gwynneth White

Genre:  YA Fantasy

Soul Wars Saga, Book 1

Gwynneth White's website

Amazon | Goodreads

Description (taken from Goodreads):

Everyone has a soul mate. But what do you do when your soul mate would rather give his soul to the demons than be with you?

Seventeen-year-old Erin has a problem. Seth has been hers forever, but now an ancient curse is tearing him away. And the demons who invoked it will stop at nothing – even murder – to claim him as their own.

How can she win against a curse so binding that it has damned countless others to this same fate – an eternity alone?

The answer lies in the past. To find it, Erin and Seth must risk all, travelling back in time to a dangerous world where love is forbidden, and life – and death – hang on a pledge.

Follow Erin and Seth as they travel to ancient Shenaya and confront the curse that has plagued their families for millennia. Caught in a war between the Angelic Guardians and the Gefallen, the disembodied dead, they must fight to keep their souls in tact and their love untainted.

This book has a lot of fantasy that I wasn't expecting.  Soul mates, curses, prophecies, wars, etc.  But I wasn't expecting to see a story of the past weaved into the present.  It was a very different take to the fantasies I'm used to.  And I believe it worked well.

Meet Seth and Erin, soul mates before they were born.  I get that they were meant for each other, but it kind of made it difficult for me to see the romance between them since Erin was so accepting of the soul mate idea (can you tell I wouldn't be that accepting?).  Anyways, the story starts with an African trip to meet their newlywed siblings.  Seth's brother, Kyle, is on a quest to find some diamonds.  And lo and behold, Seth and Erin happen to find a diamond.  But it plunges them deeper into a fantastical story which is far from what they were expecting.

They find themselves in the middle of a war between the Guardians and the Gefallen, between good and evil.  And they're forced to choose a side.  I kind of felt for Seth the whole time because I wouldn't want to pick a side either.  But they're thrown back in time to watch what happened in the past and how a curse prevents the citizens of Shenaya from truly loving and thinking for themselves.  And this will help them choose sides and hopefully break the curse.

Here's what I thought about it:  there's a lot of story-telling.  I wasn't expecting to see the past through Erin's and Seth's eyes.  And I believe this sets up the second book (which I'm hoping is more in the present than the first).  Seeing all this prophecy, curses, and folklore was definitely different.  Almost like angels-and-demons-feeling without the generic haloes and pitchforks.  And I was a little confused with how the diamond plays into the story.  I liked it, and I'm rooting for Seth...

This book is for pure fantasy lovers.  Those who like the whole premise of good and evil would enjoy it.  While it is young adult fiction, I would not recommend it to the young teens out there (there's some more mature themes in the book).

Thanks goes to Swallow Press for providing me a review copy.

Challenges:  Debut Author Challenge and Young Adult Reading Challenge

Click here to read an excerpt from Pledged

Giveaway

Swallow Press is graciously offering five ebooks of Pledged to my readers.  The winners will be emailed a coupon code that can be used to retrieve their copy from Smashwords.

• This giveaway is open internationally (as long as you can access Smashwords).
• Giveaway ends on Thursday, September 6 (moved from Monday to give an additional three days).
• You can enter via the Rafflecopter form below.  You can enter by doing one of the following:
• Free entry.  Just click to enter.
• Leave a comment on this post.  Answer the question:  Do you believe in soul mates?
• Tweet about the giveaway.  Leave a link to your tweet in the comments section

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Excerpt and Giveaway: Pledged by Gwynneth White

I'm super excited to be hosting this excerpt and giveaway for Pledged.  The book sounds awesome, and I'll be reading it soon.  And to celebrate it's upcoming release, I'm hosting a giveaway.  Thanks goes to Gin at Addicted to Words for creating the tour banner.

Pledged by Gwynneth White

Genre:  YA Paranormal Fantasy

Soul Wars Saga, Book 1

Gwynneth White's website

Expected publication date:  September 1, 2012

Amazon | Goodreads

Excerpt (used with permission from Swallow Press):

Despite the heat, Seth felt icy. Dread could do that to him. Or so he had recently discovered. Deep breathing usually calmed him, so he sucked in a lungful of desert air and told himself to relax. It didn’t help. By the time he’d walked from the aircraft to the immigration hall he’d ripped off a jagged piece of thumbnail, already bitten raw. He handed his US passport to the Botswanan border official, and, after a frown, and a stamp, he joined the crowd at the baggage carousel. Botswana in southern Africa was the last place on earth he’d ever have picked for a holiday destination. But he wasn’t here on holiday. Not even close.

His backpack was slow in coming. Tired from his long-haul flight from New York, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Almost as if to mock him, the hated vision that had brought him to Botswana burst into his mind. In an instant he was back in ancient times, watching a man he knew only as Gideon. As usual, Gideon was huddled on a windswept hill with his band of hopeless soldiers, waiting to be slaughtered by a huge army gathered in the valley below.

Seth snapped his eyes open to stop the battle from waging in his mind. It wasn’t that he was particularly squeamish; he’d watched enough movies to iron clad his stomach against gory visuals. But no movie had ever left him icy with dread the way Gideon’s battle did. And the reason for that was simple. The moment the visions had started, he had known that the war, fought so long ago in a place he’d never heard of, was far from over. And, as reluctant as he was, he too was being enlisted to fight in a cause he didn’t understand or want.

He forced himself to focus on the present: Erin, who waited for him in the arrivals hall; his brother Kyle, whom he’d come to Botswana to visit; Kyle’s expedition to find the Lost City of the Kalahari . . .

He ripped off another piece of fingernail. Thinking about the search for the Lost City was almost as bad as the war-vision. I hope Kyle never finds the damned place. He slapped his hand on his thigh. Enough! Grabbing his backpack off the carousel, he set his face into a smile and strode into the arrivals hall.

The first hurdle was finding Erin. She was due to arrive an hour earlier on a flight from Cape Town in South Africa, one of Botswana’s neighbours. He’d never met her, although they had spoken over the phone once. Then she’d described herself as “a short, seventeen-year-old (a year younger than him) with a mass of ginger hair.” She’d sounded nice. Meeting her was the one ray of brightness in this otherwise dark picture.

He stopped to scan the crowd. A petite girl with shoulder length, reddish- blonde curls, dressed in skinny jeans and a purple blouse, immediately caught his eye. It had to be Erin. Nice legs. What’s it with girls that they always under-sell themselves? He studied her face with his artist’s eye. Vermeer would’ve killed to paint her. Suddenly wishing he didn’t look so grimy after his three plane-changes, he walked over to join her. “Hi, I’m Seth. You’ve got to be Erin. My brother’s just married your sister Izzy.”

“And after only knowing each other for about a week.”

Her dimpled grin was infectious, making him crack his trademark crooked smile. “Madness.”

“Mysterious.” Erin cocked her head to one side, seemingly appraising him. He knew he had been accurate when he’d told her he was tall and dark-haired. But what he had failed to mention was what girls had often said they liked about him: his strong, angular face, softened by expressive brown eyes. He watched her eyes rove over his grey Muse: Resistance t-shirt, taking in his broad shoulders and chest. From there they darted down his black camo-pants to his boots. Amused by her blatant assessment, he cocked his head to one side, watching her. Suddenly Erin giggled – was she embarrassed? – and picked up her bag.

“We’ve yet another plane to catch. My fourth in the last twenty-four hours,” Seth said, hoping to explain away his rumpled appearance. “To a place called Maun.”

“So we do. Let the adventure begin.”

Author Bio:  Gwynneth White

I have spent my entire life living in a parallel universe of make-believe characters, only coming back to reality for long enough to check that no one burnt the house down in my absence. A few years ago I decided to commit some of those ‘friends’ and their stories to paper. The Soul Wars Saga is the result of those efforts. Before that I co-authored two non-fiction travel books – The Complete Guide to 4x4 Trails and The Ultimate 4x4 Guide. Both books became instant best-sellers in South Africa where I live. And before that even, I studied a degree in African History and Politics at the University of Stellenbosch. When I’m not writing, I am a wife to Andrew and a mom to Stephanie, Erin, and Kate, our teenage daughters. My family and I live in a small town outside Cape Town with two dogs, a cat, a horse, and some neglected fish. Now that you know a little about me, I would love to get to know you. Please befriend me at:

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Giveaway

Swallow Press is graciously offering five ebooks of Pledged to my readers.  The winners will be emailed a coupon code that can be used to retrieve their copy from Smashwords.

• This giveaway is open internationally (as long as you can access Smashwords).
• Giveaway ends on Monday, September 3.
• You can enter via the Rafflecopter form below.  You can enter by doing one of the following:
• Free entry.  Just click to enter.
• Leave a comment on this post.  Answer the question:  Do you believe in soul mates?
• Tweet about the giveaway.  Leave a link to your tweet in the comments section

a Rafflecopter giveaway