Book Review - Elixir Bound

Ah, I love me some good ol' fashioned questy-story-with-a-good-message.

Knowing the background behind Katie's book made it all the more special for me, but I was surprised to see a lot of those growing-up-themes that I used in Double Life.

Read: My own issues




Katora is a fiery middle-child who has just been given an interesting task. She, her younger brother and sister, and some random dude (more on that later), along with their trusty fantastical creature, have to go on a quest to find the flowers to make a panacea-type elixir.

But here's the catch: Katora's got some decisions to make when she gets there. Namely that she's got to give up her free will to protect the Elixir. And because absolute power corrupts absolutely...she's also got to decide if it's worth it to even make the damn potion.

Katora's a young woman after my own heart, in that she has to control E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. As a (not-so-) young woman with major control issues, her stomping-foot reactions when people tried to take over her leadership position resonated with me.

You go, Katora. #girlpower

I loved the sibling relationship and I almost wished we had spent more time with them, instead of with Hirsten.

*sigh*

Hirsten.

This is the one thing that pulled this one down to three and a half stars. Hirsten was supposed to go along to be the "guide," but his entire role in the book seemed to be to make googly eyes at Katora, and to distract her from her mission. I think he did like...one map-related thing the entire book, but definitely kissed her about two days into their journey.

Towards the middle and end of the book, it totally worked and I began rooting for them. But at the beginning, it was hard for me to reconcile her spending time thinking about his lips while she and her two younger siblings were in Mortal Peril. I prefer a slow burn to my love stories, and this one was a sunburn that faded to a gorgeous tan.

There's a lot of things left unfinished at the end of the book, but not so much that you're dying for the next book, which I believe is coming out in the next couple of months. It's a short read with a heroine that I just couldn't help but root for!

Buy Elixir Bound on Amazon