YA Books Podcast - Episode 96 - To The Falls

To the Falls Book one of the falls trilogy

Heather Renee

https://www.amazon.com/Falls-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B06XX6FYB7/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1514851955&sr=1-1&keywords=to+the+falls

4.6 stars on 120 reviews
Published April 29, 2017

Book 2 From The Falls, Published on August 4th and has 4.7 stars on 94 reviews

Book 3 Embracing the Falls, Published on on December 29th, just a few days ago. It has a 4.9 star average on 56 reviews.

This author has her street team in place to get that many reviews up so quickly. Good for her. She appears to be a self published author and making smart moves. She has published her entire trilogy in one year and all three books are in the top 55K for the paid kindle store. That means she is selling at least one of each book a day. That may not sound like a lot, but for an indie author, it's a good start.

Heather Renee is an indie author that lives in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest in Oregon. She writes YA Fantasy that has a mixture of suspense, humor and a little romance.

When Heather's not writing, she is spending time with her beautiful daughter and amazing husband. Two cats, and a dog who loves the snow, complete their household. On weekends if she doesn't have a book in her face, you can find Heather going on different adventures with her family. Her favorite being hiking to the top of Multnomah Falls.

 

Kaliah "Kali" Atwater is awaiting two things, finishing sophomore year in college and her upcoming twentieth birthday. The day before Kali’s birthday, she finds out that the dream she's had every night for almost a year of a beautiful land, isn't a fantasy at all. It's her birth place.

Every twenty years a new generation of Guardians return to Arvata to bring life back to their world and renew the magic of the Falls. Now it’s Kali’s turn, but dark magic has made its way into her new home preventing the Falls from replenishing.

Kali must accept the role assigned to her by the Fates or let Arvata crumble. Can she and her friends save Arvata in time? Will new love make her stronger? Or will the darkness finally win?

Only the Fates know for sure...

Things that pulled me out of the story. It was hard to read out loud. Some of the sentences seemed inside out to me. I had to record some of them four times to get them to flow right. I don't know if that is a local way of speaking where the author comes from, but, as many great authors do, she might want to read her writing out loud to see how it flows, or maybe have her editor do it.

I wasn't sure out some of the tenses she used. She talked about how the dream had changed "this night" when I felt like she was relating something that had happened in the past. To me it should have been, "last night". No biggie, I know, but it pulled me out. Also, she talks about how she will have her last final that day, and later she said she didn't have a chance to eat between finals. Again, no big deal, but it pulled me out to wonder how that worked.

She also spoke about how relieved she was once her final was over, how her whole body showed it, then she says she can't wait to get back into the water to relieve some of the stress she is feeling. That left we feeling ambiguous.

The parents are young without a wrinkle on their faces, but a few pages later they have worry lines. I think the author was saying they were frowning in worry, but having worry lines, in my mind, is something more akin to wrinkles, which they didn't have. Maybe I'm picking nits, but it took me out of the story and I think a more astute editor should have caught the contradiction in words.

Again. The story sounds familiar. A person coming of age to find that they are a guardian over a people or a planet. The writing was good enough to keep me interested, though, I would have liked a reason to keep reading earler on. If this is your type of story, it looks like the author has a strong following and then there are two more books to enjoy.