The Haunted Rose: 03/26/12

Behold! The awesomeness of my post for this blog tour! It includes a review, a guest post, and a giveaway! :) It just glows with raw awesomeness. Wish you had some of this awesomeness? Enter the giveaway below!

Title- The Forever Girl

Author- Rebecca Hamilton

Source- E-book sent from Dark Mind Book Tours

Pages- 350

Publisher- Immortal Ink Publishing

Publication Date- January 26th 2012

Goodreads Summary-

Sophia Parsons’ family has skeletons, but they aren’t in their graves...

Solving the mystery of an ancestor’s hanging might silence the clashing whispers in Sophia's mind, but the cult in her town and the supernaturals who secretly reside there are determined to silence her first. As Sophia unknowingly crosses the line into an elemental world full of vampire-like creatures, shapeshifters, and supernatural grim reapers, she meets Charles, a man who becomes both a lover and ally.

But can she trust him?

It’s not until someone nearly kills Sophia that she realizes the only way to unveil the source of her family's curse: abandon her faith or abandon her humanity. If she wants to survive, she must accept who she is, perform dark magic, and fight to the death for her freedom.

~Review~

First Thought-

Oh darn. Please oh please no more lame witch and vampire romances. :( But the summary is just so enticing!

What I liked-

I was litteraly blown away. I flew across my room becuase it was just so magical. Ha no not literally I was just so engrossed that I couldn't put it down. I proudly read it in one sitting. I thinks its halarious that poor Sophia gets harrassed by a bible thumper in the beginning but after that I had no clue what was going to happen next. In my head I was like, this girl is a loser, an outcast. She sucks at life really. Even her own momma is disappointed in her. I really wish she wasnt hated so much though. Heres why her life sucks; she tried a simple positive energy ritual that just went wrong, she has a curse listening to voices in her head all day, she found a dead body a long time ago and people still think she killed him. But it all changes the night after that spell gone wrong. The very next day Ivory her best friend convinces her to party and thats the night she catches unwanted attention.

What I disliked-

I was so confused about the different charcteristics of the elementals. Sophia learns about them later on in the book. I had a hard time keeping up with who is what and what is who. At one point I cried becuase Ivory was my favorite character, and well ,you dont want to know what happens to her. I accidently got a smudge of mascara on my kindle too. :(

Overall Readability-

It rocked my mismatched socks off. It's fast, easy to get into, and just awesome. So you might be tired of witch or vampire romance, well that doesn't matter becuase this book blows your mind epically with witty comebacks, death wishes, and elemental powers. The Forever Girl won my heart over Twilight.

My Final Thought-

Fly little birdy fly! <-My favorite bird Red :) Oh and I thought, HOLY CRAP. Excuse my language please but its just I can't wait for the second one. I must know what happens!

5 out of 5 Haunted Roses

(I was going to add my fancy rose pictures but i'm lazy)

~Guest Post~

And now the lovely Rebecca Hamilton will give the details of each elemental in the book...

All about the Elementals…

The elementals in the Forever Girl Series are all based on the five traditional elements: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit. There is one series Main Character for every element, but there are actually 7 books in the series. The reason is that one of the elements (Sophia, the spirit) will take up 3 books. I also see Sophia’s Journey in the three Wiccan stages of Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and her books within the series can also work alone as a trilogy. Her books will be 1, 4, and 7. In books 2, 3, 5, and 6, we will meet the other main characters, which represent the remaining elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit.Today I’m going to get a bit more into each Elemental.To begin, you must understand the role of Universe in this series.

The UNIVERSE

The Universe is a bit like a god, though referred to almost most as a committee. No one knows who or what the Universe is.The Universe can create but not destroy.It lives on positive energy. Without positive energy, it will die, and if it dies, all life within the Universe will also die.The Universe gathers positive energy from the human lives it’s created. This gathering of energy causes human’s to sleep.Despite the Universe’s need for positive energy, humans full of darkness were born into this world. Not only can the Universe not feed off of their energy, but these darker humans are responsible for destroying positive energy within the world.

FIRE Elementals

The Fire elementals are the Chibold, which are based on sprites. They are mischievous at times, and appear as children. They must have a “host” family in order to live. If they go more than a century without one, they will die. Initially the Universe sent them to differentiate good from the evil, the notion being that children are often seen as property or “less than” adults. Adults will say things to children they won’t say to each other, or they will say things around children that they think children can’t understand, or they will do things to children that they wouldn’t do to others. Children, in this world (and perhaps the real world, too…) are like little seers whose worth is undervalued. If you want to know what kind of person someone is, study the way they treat a child—more specifically, the way they treat them when no one is looking. So while these Chibold have the appearance of children, they have supreme knowledge and are able to communicate directly with the Universe. They also sometimes act as messengers and guides. The Chibold aren’t heavily explored in The Forever Girl (Book 1 of the Forever Girl Series) but they’re there and will become more prominent in later books in the series. What is most interesting about the Chibold is that the other elementals don’t know much about them!
Special Notes: Chibold restore energy through hibernation-like sleep and by connecting with nature. They are known to be mischievous and have a history of causing trouble, sometimes even harming other unintentionally.

EARTH Elementals

The Earth elementals are also known as Cruor. They are similar to vampires. Their legend, in the world of The Forever Girl, is that they were created by the Universe to hunt the dark humans. They were humans who were buried alive, and the Universe resurrected them as guardians of the night. As time went on, Cruor became able to multiple in number by “turning” other humans. The intention of the Cruor was to purify the darkness in this world by eliminating it and by creating other Cruor to help them. Instead, some Cruor harboreddarkness of their own, and soon this darkness became more of a keystone than an anomaly. Cruor are immortal until they die either by sunlight, decapitation, or a stake through the heart. Quite traditional indeed. No sparkles need apply.Special Notes: Earth Elementals can use their blood to heal injury and disease. They can also erase or create thoughts in a human minds. Cruor are extremely fast and strong, but they are not the fastestelementals.

WATER Elementals

The Water elementals are known as the Strigoi. They are similar to shapeshifters. The Universe intended them as hunters of the darker Cruor, but, unfortunately, this turned into more of a battle between the elemental races. You could call them im-mortal enemies, though Strigoi are only immortal so long as they don’t shift. When they are born, they age the way a human would, but once they reach adulthood, they stop aging so long as they shift regularly. If they don’t shift for prolonged periods, they can age. This also makes them able to carry and birth children (so long as they don’t shift while pregnant.)Special Notes: Water Elementals can see auras. They are faster than the Cruor. Strigoi can go out in direct sunlight. They can be killed as easily as a human or animal, and if they are killed in their animal form, they remain an animal—this is to protect the secret of their existence.

AIR Elementals

Air Elementals, or the Ankou, are faerie grim reapers. They’re based on the legend of the Ankou, and they brought to this world a magic intended to help bring peace between the Strigoi and the Cruor, and also to deal with the spirits of these supernaturals following their death. If they are one of the dark supernaturals, the Ankou are supposed to destroy the spirit entirely. However, if the spirit is good, it may be reborn into another life, and the Ankou are responsible for arranging this. Not all spirits reborn, however, will be supernatural in their new lives. Of course, this was not without its problems as well (as ever the Universe is clearly incapable of perfection!). When the Ankou came, they brought peace between the Cruor and Strigoi, but this also led to procreation between the races.Special Notes: The Ankou can also heal the earth. Their wings are visible in direct light, and prolonged sunlight can shrink their bodies overtime. Trying to reverse this effect has some undesirable effects… Ankou are the fastest of all elementals, with the ability to travel through space AND time. The Ankou, when they go dark, can be some of the most vicious of elementals.

The COUNCIL (and Dual Breeds)

The Council was meant to oversee the wishes of the Universe. The Universe, however, began to request things of the Council that it’s members did not want to honor. For example, the Universe wanted to bring a balance to the Council, with one element representing one of each of the five places as leaders of the Council. The current leaders, however, and more especially the Queen (Queen Callista), did not want balance. Moreover, the presence of the Ankou led to cross-breeding of other supernatural races. Dual bred races have an easier time integrating with human society. Compared to their purebred counterparts, they are weaker in some ways and stronger in others, but this gives them an edge (while also making their abilities a bit unpredictable). This worries the Council. Further, the presence of dual breeds increased discovery by humans (or those two events coincided—which does not necessarily mean one was the cause!). However, the Council liked to blame the dual-natured for this, as it gave them an opportunity to launch an attack against all of their kind.Before that point, there was a resistance between the Universe and the Council, but at this time, the Council was in complete rebellion. The Council would argue that the Universe didn’t know what it was doing—that the Universe had messed up time and time again. The Council believed they could do better, but the Universe will not give up yet, because the Council’s actions could lead to the extermination of all life within the Universe (and the Universe itself).And that’s what brings us to…

SPIRIT Elementals

There had been several witch trials (such as in Denmark) before any spirit elementals were chosen, but as they were the first spirit elementals chosen during the Salem witch trials, they quickly became known as “witches” as well, this being largely because “witch” was something humans used to call humans they thought of as supernatural, and the spirit elementals were just that—mortal supernaturals.Witches were intended to conjure magic from the Universe directly and use that magic to restore balance in the Earth. Their very presence, of course, would help restore balance just by bringing all of the elements into play, but it was their magic that was intended to create harmony. The Universe, being a bit wiser for its past mistakes, created witches in such a way that any harm they caused would be brought back to themselves. (Yes, I did take some inspirations from the Wiccan religion here, though I’d like to be clear that although Sophia is Wiccan, the witches in the novel are not meant to translate to Wiccans. I see the Wiccan faith and Fantasy magic in my series as separate…)
Because of a supernatural war (over the existence of dual breeds), the spirit elementals were not able to fulfill their duty, and the war raged in humanity over the idea of “witches”. But as the witches were mortal, the Universe granted immortality instead to their *magic*. This was the start of hereditary witches. The magic, however, when passed down, would be halved, and when it was passed down again, it would halve again.Forever Girls were something more. They are also spirit elementals, but their magic is carried with their soul. The spirit of the first witch stays in her lineage (this means it always passes down to the daughters of the males with the same surname). So if a woman can discover she is one of the Forever Girls, she can tap into all those lifetimes of magic. Otherwise, she can only use the magic that was passed down to her through her ancestors.Special Notes: Witches can have one or more special skills, such as clairaudience (the ability to hear thoughts in another realm) and telekinesis. Even witches can be dark, however such choices have a history of ultimately being self-destructive.

Other Abilities

Humans can also have special gifts, but without any form of immortality.
This is probably a lot to take in all at once, which is why in The Forever Girl (the first book in the series) the information is given in bits and pieces, and some parts won’t be elaborated until later books in the series.