Dark Heart Of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

Dark Heart of Magic centers mostly around the Tournament of Blades. It is part of a festival in Cloudburst Falls where the families and compete against each other in a so called friendly way and provide a tourist attraction. Deah was the champion last year. And her family puts a lot of pressure for her to keep the trophy in the Draconi family.

There are some twists and turns in this book. Lila is thrown for a loop when she learns that she will be competing in the Tournament of Blades for the Sinclair family. She will not be able to hide in the shadows for long. She is going to have to try even harder to keep her real identity a secret before Victor Draconi decides to come after her.

I loved seeing more of Deah. While she might be the “princess” of the Draconi family on the outside. This book shows that life is not as glamorous for her on the inside. She has it much tougher than her brother, Blake. She also has much more of a conscience than the two of them put together, but she has her reasons for not standing up to them. I think she will be critical in the final battle with Victor.

The story is a little bit slow building as the families deal with murdered tree trolls which is driving the tree trolls into town and causing a nuisance. We don’t have all the worldbuilding that takes place in the first book, but there is plenty of storytelling and more character development. I can’t wait to see where the final book in this trilogy will take Lila, Devon, Mo and the gang.

Narration
Once again, I thought that Brittany Pressley really nailed the narration of this series. I loved how she did each of the different voices. I was clearly able to tell each of the characters apart. Her pace and tone were perfect. There was one particular character in this book that has clearly lost marbles and she did a great job portraying that with her narration.

**Audiobook was provided to me by the author. This review is my opinion and was not requested or provoked in anyway by the author.