Jasmyn by Alex Bell

Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

One day, without warning, Jasmyn's husband died.

Since then, everything has been different.

Wrapped up in her grief, Jasmyn is trapped in a world without colour, without flavour - without Liam. But even through the haze of misery she begins to notice unusual events, as sense of being watched, a strange man visiting her home and asking pointed questions about her dead husband. Her world has been turned upside down, but even so, things are not as they should be.

Eventually Jasmyn begins to explore the discrepancies that have sprung up after his death - the plane tickets to places Liam claimed he'd never visited, details of the meetings he was never supposed to have - and to follow their trail back into the events of his life.

But the mysteries are deeper than she expected, and are leading her in surprising directions: into fairytales filled with swans, castles and bones; into a tale of a murder committed by a lake and a vicious battle between brothers; into legends of a lost past, and a story of stolen love.

Reviewed by wyvernfriend on

4 of 5 stars

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When Jasmyn's husband dies it's bad enough but that's only the beginning of the strangeness that starts up, black swans fall dead into his grave to start with. Jasmyn is an albino, though without some of the light problems some albinos have. She then learns that he has secrets and things spiral out of control. As the story develops there begins to be magic and things happen that can't be explained by rational science. In order to defeat evil this magic has to be embraced and it has costs.

It's an interesting story of swans, fairytales, castles, a magic token and a broken violin. My biggest problem with it was a lack of depth, it didn't quite feel like the characters really felt about what was going on.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 7 May, 2013: Finished reading
  • 7 May, 2013: Reviewed