Book Review: Burning Emerald

Title: Burning Emerald by Jaime Reed
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Publisher: Kensington/Dafina
Pages: 302 pages
Genre: Paranormal
Source: Publisher in exchange for an honest review

SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers to Living Violet, the first book in the series.

Goodreads Summary: Coping with loss, keeping secrets from friends, and juggling classes has kept Sam Marshall busy in her senior year. She finds comfort in her unlikely companion, Caleb, as their connection grows to where one cannot survive without the other.

But Sam’s biggest problem is a powerful enemy that wants her for himself and to destroy Caleb and his family. Determined to keep Caleb safe, Sam fights a battle where she is both the enemy and the prize, but victory will come at a deadly price.

Normally, I’m not into books about incubus and succubus, but Jaime Reed really makes this work for young adults and certainly makes it work for me.

Burning Emerald picks up shortly after Samara Marshall’s eventful summer where she finds out that both her co-worker Caleb and friend Nadine are Cambions, people who are born with a sentient incubus or succubus inhabiting their bodies. It’s the same summer that Sam fell for Caleb and Nadine died in Sam’s arms trying to save her life from another Cambion. That’s when Nadine’s succubus left her dead body and took residence in Sam’s instead. Now as her senior year begins, Sam is attracting the attention of the majority of boys in her school and the jealous ire of all the girls. And if this new life of cravings and feeding on people’s energy without killing them isn’t hard enough, there is someone from Nadine’s past that is stalking Sam and will stop at nothing to get her.

As in Living Violet, I loved Sam’s sassy, snarky humor. Her relationship with Caleb is also more intense but still sweet. Caleb is still every bit the awesome, mature boyfriend who is even more caring and protective of Sam than ever. He does get a bit alpha at one point in the book and I loved it! I also liked that Sam’s mother is very active in her life and knows about her new paranormal situation. I’ve read so many books where the parents have no idea what’s going on with their teen who then has to sneak around and lie about their supernatural powers. Of course, I love ethnically diverse characters in YA books and Burning Emerald has a great mix of them.

This is the first YA book I’ve read with incubi and succubi and that’s probably because the sexual nature of these beings is not appropriate for teen readers. Jaime Reed makes this story, interesting, exciting and still keeps an edge to it without it being inappropriate.

Burning Emerald is a really good sequel to Living Violet. The book ends with a heck of a cliffhanger and I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series, Fading Amber, which comes out next year.

Content: Kissing, discussions about sex, profanity and violence.

My Rating: Really Good!