Review: The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden

The Casquette Girls 

by Alys Arden 

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal
Publication Date: October 2013
Page Count: 512
Source: e-book for review

Goodreads Synopsis: After the Storm of the Century rips apart New Orleans, Adele Le Moyne and her father are among the first to return to the city following the mandatory evacuation. Adele wants nothing more than for life to return to normal, but with the silent city resembling a mold-infested war zone, a parish-wide curfew, and mysterious new faces lurking in the abandoned French Quarter, normal will have to be redefined.

Events too unnatural – even for New Orleans – lead Adele to an attic that has been sealed for three hundred years, and the chaos she unleashes threatens not only her life but everyone she knows. Mother Nature couldn’t drain the joie de vivre from the Big Easy, but someone or something is draining life from its residents.

Caught suddenly in a hurricane of eighteenth-century myths and monsters, Adele must quickly untangle a web of magic that links the climbing murder rate back to her own ancestors. But who can you trust in a city where everyone has a secret, and where keeping them can be a matter of life and death – unless, that is, you’re immortal.

GOODREADS . AMAZON 

Review: When I opened up the email about the opportunity to read this book for review, I was initially struck by the cover. Let's just take a moment to appreciate just how beautifully done it is. I love this sort of cover; simple, but with a picture that has your intrigued about the story. Wonderful typography that is a color that pops off the background. Yeah, I would say that this is an A+ cover. For anyone who has been around my blog, you probably already know that I tend to decide what to read based on the cover. 

Now, I was a little concerned when I read the synopsis and realized that it was going to be a paranormal. Usually I do not choose paranormal books to read when it is a review opportunity offered to me. However, I was very much intrigued by the synopsis, so I decided that I would give it a chance. I am incredibly glad that I did so, as well. I did not expect to love this book as much as a did, but it was simply wonderful, and I was thrilled to be reading another debut author this year! 

The book is broken up into three separate parts. The first part was a bit slow for me, but it was still beautifully written. We are introduced to Adele, who is returning to her home of New Orleans after the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. It was amazing listening to the description of the town based on how Adele was seeing it, and it did make me feel like I was there with her. I love when an author describes the setting so well that you feel like you are there, and Arden did an amazing job of this. 

Part two was honestly my favorite part of the novel. I loved the flash backs that we received from the past back to the present, and then seeing how they were going to play a role in the rest of the plot and book. I am a big fan of getting flashbacks in novels as long as they are handled well, and I feel that Arden did a very good job of having things flow smoothly. We met so many other great characters through this part of the book as well, and they were all so developed. I love when an author spends as much time developing the minor characters as she does the protagonist. 

Now part three brought about a lot of the things that I was most worried about, and luckily I had worried for nothing. Of course, we are all used to the idea of vampires of Twilight where they sparkle and fall in love with the humans without worrying about the danger and what not. I am SO glad that none of that was the case, here. Sure, there were relationships and things happening, but these vampires were obviously dangerous in the way that you would expect them to be. I respect Arden for doing this so well. 

Lastly, another thing that I really enjoyed about this book was that I could never guess what was going to happen next. Well, I tried to guess, but I always ended up being completely wrong. I love when a book surprises me, and this book seemed to keep me on my toes the whole time. I could have never guessed how this book was going to end, and I loved that. I really look forward to continuing this series, and reading anything else that Arden decides to publish.

Rating: 5.0 / 5.0