If you haven’t read Brightest Kind of Darkness this review will contain slight spoilers.

Release Date: July 9th, 2011
Author: [Official Website]
Publisher: Self Published
Pages: 274 [Goodreads]
Buy it: [Amazon] [Barnes & Noble]

Once Nara combines her prophetic ability with Ethan’s power to outsmart Fate at his own deadly cat-and-mouse game, she’s more determined than ever to help Ethan learn the meaning behind the raven sword tattoo that suddenly appeared on his back after their confrontation with Fate. During her quest to uncover the tattoo’s secrets, Nara enlists the help of some new friends and discovers her own surprising connection to Ethan. While Nara digs deeper into the mystery, her desire for answers leads her down a dangerous path full of powerful and ruthless enemies. Swept into an age-old battle, Nara quickly learns that keeping one’s enemies close can be a necessary evil, making an intangible enemy she can control far more preferable to the human enemies she can’t.

It’s series like Brightest Kind of Darkness that make being a book blogger all the more worth it. The blogging community is a wonderful thing to be apart of for many reasons. One of the best parts is being able to discover amazing books that chances are you wouldn’t have ever heard of or seen. I loved BKoD (book #1) with every fiber of my being. In my review I talked about the dark and immensely creative world Ms. Michelle created containing a wide spectrum of fun and relatable characters. The danger was scary and real along with the romance that builds between Ethan and Nara. Although I found Lucid a sliver less enjoyable as BKod, I still highly enjoyed it giving it 4.5 stakes.

Let’s talk about the plot in Lucid. After book one’s ending we learned that the dark and ominous entity that targeted Nara was Fate itself. Pretty much Fate was ticked off because Nara has the ability to dream her whole day and in doing so has the ability to change the outcome. In BKoD Nara took it upon herself to stop a bomb from going off in her school by knowing ahead of time via dream that it was planted in a locker. This series is very “Final Destination-y” with Fate wreaking vengeance over the loss of  pre-calculated deaths.  After the showdown in BKoD you’d think Nara would be warranted a period of rest. Nope. Someone’s out to get her, again, and this time the danger is even more potent. There’s a new guy in town with a mysterious agenda. Well, except for the “kill Nara” part. At the end of BKoD Nara and Ethan realized that ravens are connected to Ethan in some inexplicable way. With Ethan away trying to “reconnect” with his parents, Nara takes it upon herself to research ravens and Ethan’s raven sword tattoo. Once new, fun homicidal guy gets a whiff of what Nara is researching, to say he’s even more eager to off her would be an understatement.

There’s also a couple other new residents including my personal favorite: Drystan the foreign exchange student from Whales. I’m a huge sucker for accents, so the fact that he’s also visually pleasing was just an added bonus. The majority of the book Ethan is away which gives Drystan’s character a perfect excuse to find it’s way into Nara’s life. He may be cute and charming but that’s not the only wonderful thing about Drystan. I won’t give away any spoilers, but I will say that he’s more than he seems and is pretty connected to Nara just like Ethan was in BKoD. Another new character is Harper. She’s also a new student although she’s not a foreigner, just a girl who’s been home schooled most of her life. She’s kind of reserved yet very friendly towards Nara.

There’s also quite the change in the Ethan and Nara dynamic by way of Ethan’s absence and Drystan’s arrival. I know there’s a huge legion of die-hard Ethan fans out there (myself included) so therefore my opinion might not be as well received… However, I got to admit, I actually preferred Drystan over Ethan in Lucid. *Please don’t throw rotten fruit!!* Just hear me out. Ethan is very charming, sweet and protective but throughout Lucid I sort of got fed up with his whole “can’t let Nara know what’s going on” and “she shouldn’t have to protect herself” mindset. I guess what irked me the most is that Ethan won’t let Nara defend Nara. I feel like he treats her as some type of damsel in distress, which she definitely is not. Then there’s Drystan. You can tell right away that he cares about Nara, and after witnessing previously mentioned new dangerous guy attack her, Drystan takes it upon himself to teach Nara self defense. He wants Nara to be safe, not ignorant. I feel like Nara’s character did some much needed growing in this latest book because of Drystan’s influence and Ethan’s long absence.

So your asking yourself “why 4.5 instead of 5″. I did enjoy Lucid. A LOT. However, I found a few of the plot lines pretty predictable. What I loved most about BKoD was the fact that I had no clue what would happen. Although a lot of stuff is still a mystery in Lucid, some end-of-the-book revelations weren’t really that surprising. Overall though I LOVED Lucid. As you can see by my essay-review I have a lot of good thoughts and feelings towards this series. The cliffhanger in Lucid is cruel in that I-can’t-flippin-wait-to-read-the-next-one kind of way.

Oh!!! and before I forget. I’ve decided to hold a small giveaway. This contest will run 2 weeks. Fill out the raffle copter below for a chance to win an e-copy of Brightest Kind of Darkness (book #1) or Lucid (book #2). Whoever wins can choose either a Nook or Kindle copy depending on their type of e-reader and which book depending on if they’ve read book one.

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