Where Genres Collide Traci Dowe YA Author

Book Review: Taken at Dusk: A Shadow Falls Novel by C.C. Hunter

Traci Kenworth

St. Martin’s Press                                                          YA Supernatural fiction

The 3^rd book in the Shadow Falls series

Hook: They were here.

Kylie Galen is at the Shadow Falls office, about to meet the Brightons, the couple who adopted and raised her real father. A father she’d never known in life but grown to love in his short visits from the afterlife. She came to Shadows Falls a couple months ago as a confused teen, only to learn she wasn’t normal. She wasn’t even human. Not all human. A puzzle the Brightons can help her solve.

Lucas, a werewolf with blue eyes appears. He rescued her from Mario and his rogue vampire grandson, Red. She has strong feelings for Lucas, but still admits to being torn between him and a half-fae, Derek, who left because he couldn’t bear to be around her. He was probably the reason she was reluctant to accept Lucas’ kisses.

A ghost materializes behind Mrs. Brighton. She says she has a message from so many people. Someone lives, someone dies. An emergency blares through the camp after the Brightons give her photographs. A mystery of who sent the Brightons has erupted. Derek and Burnett think the Brightons are imposters. Perry, a shape-shifter, follows them but loses them.

Kylie might be a protector—she healed Lucas and Sara, her best friend from her human world. What exactly she is, is a mystery as well as her pattern keeps changing.

Burnett assigns shadows to Kylie, in case this is another attempt by Mario to get at Kylie. She wants to go back in time to when things were good between her and Derek but life doesn’t have a rewind button. He was on assignment for Burnett. He brought Ellie, a vampire girl he used to know, back to camp with him. He says he can’t be around Kylie, her emotions drive him crazy.

Lucas and she were neighbors. She asks if he still hopes she’s a werewolf and if he’ll be disappointed if she’s not. He doesn’t answer her question. She dreams about Red, Mario’s grandson. He says that his grandparents won’t believe she would work with them, he just wants to help.

Who the ghost is deepens as she arrives pregnant and thinks her baby died. She has amnesia. She is trapped in a dream of the ghost with lab technicians. Her husband is asking for her, but they might need to extinguish her. She works through the vision the help of her roommates, Della—a vampire, and Miranda—one of seven witches at the camp, Lucas and Burnett. The lab people killed the ghost and her baby. And yet, a visit to the Fallen Cemetery has another ghost say that she had been give life by the Texas prison system for killing her own baby.

Things go from bad to worse on Parent’s Day when her human world crashes with the supernatural. Lucas’ grandmother warns that he won’t be allowed to mix bloodlines in his pack. Derek’s mother announces that Kylie and he have a crush on one another. And her mother is concerned at finding out two boys like her. Not to mention, Sara, wants to discover how Kylie healed her of cancer previously.

I have to admit, at first, taking on this book, being the third in the series was a bit confusing for me. There are so many characters, situations to remember. By the end of this book, it left me wanting not only to go back and read the two previous ones, but to continue the series as well. I think Kylie is a likeable heroine, the cast around her is interesting, and I’m interested to know who she ends up with.