Circle of Ashes by Elise Kova & Lynn Larsh (ARC Review)

Title: Circle of Ashes
Author: Elise Kova & Lynn Larsh
Type: Fiction
Genre: NA, Fantasy, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Silver Wing Press
Date published: April 9, 2018

A digital copy of this book was kindly provided by Elise Kova, in exchange for an honest review.

EVERY WISH HAS A COST BUT WILL THE SOCIETY BE WILLING TO PAY IT?

Once a hacker-for-hire living in the shadows, Josephina “Jo” Espinosa is the newest member of a magical Society. Their mandate? To grant the wishes of mortals. A simple enough task until Jo is faced with an impossible wish – and her inability to grant it might spell disaster for her entire team, if not the Society itself.

Jo is used to high-pressure situations, but after a string of disasters, the last thing she needs is stakes of this magnitude. Especially given that neither she nor the Society know quite what the consequences of failing to grant a wish might be.

The only person with answers is the Society’s aloof and cryptic leader, Snow. Yet while Jo is enigmatically drawn to the man, all their clandestine encounters leave her with only more questions about the true nature of the Society, her magic, and her own history.

Time is running out for the Society, and an executioner will rise from among them to exact the price of failure.

– My Review –

Firstly, I’d like to say how happy I am that the wait between the books in this series is very short! As most bookworms will understand, I really dislike waiting between books when I’m reading a series book-by-book as they’re published. Luckily, the wait between Society of Wishes and this book, the sequel, was 10 weeks!

Before diving into Circle of Ashes, I was excited to see how Jo’s story would progress, and looked forward to perhaps learning more about the other characters as well. Well, I got both of those things, although at times I was too focused on the intensity of the overarching plot for the book to much care about the histories and feelings of the supporting characters.

I did appreciate that Jo’s relationship with all of the other Society members did visibly develop. And the plot for the series as a whole also did progress. We were provided more information on what’s going on, but that information also made me ask new questions (which is frustrating, but also a good thing, because it means that I’m all the more eager to read book 3, which comes out in July)! I also want to say that I was a lot more emotionally invested in the story and in the characters with this book than with Society of Wishes. I even cried uncontrollably over something that I won’t mention because it’s a spoiler, and my heart is still recovering!

I’m definitely looking forward to the next book, as well as book 4, as I’m curious to see how things will wrap up (I’m assuming there will be 4 books, since the series is listed as a quartet?) The teaser cover for book 3 is also live on Goodreads, and I’m excited that we have a title, Birth of Chaos, and that the next cover will be blue!

– The Authors –

Elise Kova is the USA Today bestselling author of the Air Awakens series, Loom Saga, and Wish Quartet. In her past lives, she has graduated from an MBA program, lived in Japan for a bit, and worked for a Fortune 500 technology company. However, she finds herself much happier in her current reincarnation as full-time author. When not writing, she can usually be found playing video games, drawing, watching anime, or talking with readers on social media. She’s happy to call Saint Petersburg, Florida, her home, but is always looking forward to her next trip.

Lynn Larsh considers herself to be a serial hobby-dabbler. She got a bachelors degree in music (which she used for all of four months), studied aerial acrobatics and classical piano for many years, worked briefly as a stunt woman in a Wild West stunt show (it’s a long story), and eventually settled down into the bar tending business in St. Petersberg, FL. When she’s not acting as a purveyor of fine libations, you can find her diving head first into her newest venture as a New Adult author, or simply writing Voltron fan fiction on Archive of Our Own. Currently, Lynn is looking forward to her debut novel, SOCIETY OF WISHES (Wish Quartet, #1), out January 2018.