She believed him when he told her some Shadows were good.

When sixteen-year-old Violet Blackstone seeks to belong outside of her Christian community, she opens doors to a dark world she doesn’t understand. Her parents’ secret separation and conflict at church fuel her desire to find something more. She sneaks out to a party at Chuckanut House and meets Dakota Selby, the mysterious new guy at Bellingham High School who reads her tarot cards and tells her she doesn’t belong. When she discovers his family owns Chuckanut House, she plans to hold her parents’ twenty-fifth-wedding-anniversary party there to reunite them in the beautiful mansion surrounded by forest and ocean—and to spend more time with Dakota to prove she fits into his world.

Violet works her way into Dakota’s life and must face the secrets and Shadows buried deep within Chuckanut House and her own family’s past. Entrenched in darkness, Violet searches for light and love as she battles Shadows threatening to capture her soul.

When her life falls apart, where will she turn?

It took a while to get into the story, but once I did I had to keep reading to see how it ended. I think part of the reason is that I’m not the target audience for YA novels. I keep thinking I can read them, but when I do the characters make me batty (because, you know, they’re teenagers and moody). I’m also not a huge fan of the YA trend of skipping the introduction — I like to meet the characters before they run into their adventures, but that part of the story has been cut from the last few YA’s I’ve read.

Once I got past that, however, I realized the author had done a good job creating moody emotional teenagers. Personally, I would have liked to see more about her family and that dynamic, but there were lots of other relationships to focus on too.

Overall, an adventurous, exciting read that (once I got into it) pulled me through to the end.

I received a copy of the book from the author. All opinions are my own. (Get your copy here.)