Book Review: The Line
On to the next book! I discovered recently that if you have an Amazon Prime account, there is a Prime Reading catalog, that has hundreds of Kindle books you can download and read for free. My last book: Treasure of Saint-Lazare: A Novel of Paris, was from that catalog and didn’t exactly do it for me. But J.D. Horn’s The Line was an awesome read- full of magic, witches, and fast-paced drama. When I finished this, I immediately bought the second book of the series (The Source) which I am currently reading.
“Savannah is considered a Southern treasure, a city of beauty with a rich, colorful past. Some might even call it magical…”
“To the uninitiated, Savannah shows only her bright face and genteel manner. Those who know her well, though, can see beyond her colonial trappings and small-city charm to a world where witchcraft is respected, Hoodoo is feared, and spirits linger. Mercy Taylor is all too familiar with the supernatural side of Savannah, being a member of the most powerful family of witches in the South.”
I was torn between starting two books, and thankfully The Line is what my boyfriend convinced me to read first. (He hasn’t read either book, but thought this one sounded cool…He was right!)
Many GoodReads reviews were in agreement that this book was entertaining but mediocre, and I can see both sides of the argument. At the beginning of the story, there are many metaphors that are repeatedly used; as if the author’s editor wasn’t focused for the first twenty pages. This book is no means Pulitzer Prize-winning, but the narrative and flow of the novel rapidly increases in quality and speed as the book goes on. There are so many layers of this plot that I continued gasping and was excited/appalled when things did not go as I expected them to.
The Line is told in first-person, my favorite perspective in literature, I feel much more immersed when the character communicates to the reader as if we were them like ‘I could feel my heartbeat quicken’ (not a line from the book, I made it up, trust me his words are far more compelling.)
Recently I have been reading a lot of realistic fiction, and I missed the fantasy genre. Fantasy fiction is what made me fall in love with reading when I was a child, and I believe that’s why I like this book so much; it’s revisiting my favorite kind of story. The Line discusses magic in the realm of energy: witches are able to use their energy and shape it into magic, where other characters (non-witches) can perform magic- but only if they take energy from others, often stealing it from witches.
I greatly recommend this book! Super quick read- couldn’t put it down! Buy it now on Amazon.com
DETAILS
Title: The Line (Witching Savannah Book 1)
Author: J.D. Horn
Series(?): Witching Savannah Series
Publisher: 47North
Publication Date: February 1, 2014
Source & Format: Kindle, borrowed from Amazon
Page Count: 298
Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★
Comment below if you’ve read The Line, let me know what you thought! 🙂
