Beautiful Sins: Leigha Lowery (The Thaneaddus Chronicles, #1)

by Jennifer Hampton-Kingsley

[Kim Deister]

I really loved the plot line of this book for a lot of reasons. I have not read another book that combined the paranormal fantasy genre with dystopian fiction before and I LOVED the combo. The alternate world that Hampton created from what we know in our own reality was definately unique and drew me in from the very beginning. The suspense was built up beautifully throughout the course of the story, getting bits of the story along the way.

Leigha was a fabulous lead character in this book for one very important reason, in my opinion. She was real. She didn't have unrelatable powers or strength of personal character. She was a normal girl, a normal teenager, a girl who reacted to the upheaval in her life and in her world as a normal person would. I liked that she had the same inability to cope sometimes that we all have, but the inner strength and open mindedness to work through it to acceptance. My other favorite character was Maria, a supporting but strong character. Maria was the goth girl that flew in the face of the predominately "snobby" crowd and was her own person. Alex was strongly developed, but his controlling behavior rubbed me wrong. However, I suppose, as a prince, that is pretty much in keeping with his character profile within the story!

The conclusion was great, a perfect cliffhanger. I came to the end of the book, not having a clue how it was going to end, and the ending totally surprised me. I love not being able to accurately guess the end!

My only true issue with the story was with the editing and proofing. There were definately some issues with that, and sometimes it became a bit of a distraction. It wasn't terrible, by any means, but definately something that stopped the flow of reading for me a few times. But it was mostly things like missing punctuation, the occasional double word, or the occasional heterograph. I might have rated the book a little lower because of this, if not for the fantastic plot and characters that truly left me wanting more!

I will definately be buying the next books in the series, because the plot completely has grabbed me!