Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep

Release Date: Out now!

Publisher: Kensington Publishing

Pages: 350pgs

The Story

My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy - a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest.

But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos. First, mean girl Jasmine Ashton was murdered in the Library of Antiquities. Then, someone stole the Bowl of Tears, a magical artifact that can be used to bring about the second Chaos War. You know, death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Freaky stuff like this goes on all the time at Mythos, but I'm determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why, especially since I should have been the one who died . . .

The Review

Jennifer Estep writes books with such an unique voice and I've been a big fan of hers with her adult, urban fantasy Elemental Assassin series for quite some time now. With her new young adult series I was pretty intrigued by it and I've been meaning to pick this book up sooner than I did, but I finally got around to it and I really enjoyed it!

Gwen Frost is a new student at Mythos Academy and often feels like the odd one out because she is the only Gypsy attending the school. With other students being known for their bloodlines of Valkyries, Amazons, Vikings and all sorts of amazing ancient myths that you can possibly think of . . . Gwen believes her own abilities and strength can never really measure up to these students. For you see Gwen's power . . . she can read objects and tell which person they had belonged to originally - like a mini history lesson going through her mind - and she can even touch people and forsee what they're thinking or feeling, and what events had occured during their whole lives. While this ability can come in handy for dangerous situations however for Gwen it leaves her outside the social circle, and most of this is because no one wants her to know their deep and dark hidden secrets.

While the overall storyline was a little sidetracked for me and perhaps there were a lot of things happening all at once that confused me a wee bit, but I really loved Gwen Frost as a main character as she offered up a lot to the storyline which made it stronger and beyond hilarious at certain times in the book. She wasn't the best of heroines but she was the only character I really felt any connection to and in addition to that, she was someone with a badassery side to her which she had eventually grown into . . . so I'm very happy about that factor! But with that being said, while I loved the mythology parts weaved into the storyline and even how the book had that Percy Jackson feel to it, but the only thing I was really disappointed in was the romance.

For the romance section of the book, while it wasn't heavily focussed on - which for me doesn't happen very often in YA books since too much romance can sometimes take away your attention to the actual storyline and blah blah blah - but for this kind of book and the way it was heading towards, I was kind of hoping for a solid romance to be apart of this book and give me a team to start rooting for! But for me the romance fell flat and eventually it fell apart with these two main characters of ours, Gwen and the hot-but-the-also-dangerous Logan Quinn or what as I like to call him 'The Spartan Dude'. For my romantic love interests I want some 'sizzle' and some 'bang' between my characters, but for Gwen and Logan in particular, I just couldn't see the attraction lying between the characters, especially between Gwen and this Spartan Dude. Just couldn't see what drove them together in the first place. I mean, I love Gwen but Logan was the boy I wanted to love but ended up hating him for being so . . . well, being too bad at being Mr. Hottie Mysterious. Not my greatest quotation in reviews but that's how I felt.

On a whole I thought TOUCH OF FROST was a great start for a young adult series and I'm seriously looking forward to seeing what the author writes up next for her main characters, especially since the ending at the end of the book was a bit harsh but it was also probably necessary . . . at least for the time being! While I admit that I prefer Estep's adult series over her new YA series, but I would still highly recommend giving this book a go!

The Rating

3 1/2 / 5 stars