Comment: This book has been in the pile for many years, but it's one more of the several I decided to tackle between this year and the next, so I can decide if I like them after all or if I should donate them instead.
In this story we meet Allie, who has magical powers, namely being a Hound, which is to say she can check what has been done to someone magically and she can get an idea of who did the magic. When the story begins, she is asked to help a little boy and, to her surprise, she sees the person who did the potentially life threatening magic was her own father, with whom she has no relationship since she left home. However, the more she investigates, the more something seems to be wrong and Allie isn't certain if she can trust Zayvyon, a man who is acting as a sort of bodyguard and who has been around recently... when things get even more complicated for her, though, what else can she do but to try to find a solution...
Years ago, PNR was my "obsession" and I was looking for more series to binge in besides others I was loving at the time. However, with time, many books stayed in the pile and my focus went other ways, but now I'm trying to read the books which have been in the pile the longest, thus why I picked this one now. This is the first book I try by this author and the only expectation I had was that the plot would have some sort of connection to magic and paranormal elements.
I think the author's "voice" isn't bad, really. I think the narrative style is fluid and easy and the sequence of situations is logic. It's certainly intentional that we don't get a lot in terms of solutions and specific explanations for many issues addressed, since this is only the first book in the series and it will feature the same main characters. This aside, I think what we got was good enough, but considering th story is about magic and in this world, using magic might mean a price, such as memory loss, and even more so, the narrator is first person... I think one can see the problem here, there isn't that much, really, to go on except what the heroine describes...
Allie is an intriguing character because of her powers and what she learns about them in the progress of the story. I think it's also intentional how the author made it seem as if Allie has a lot to learn so her decisions aren't always simple and the fact she can't remember some things is pretty convenient to justify some segments which we should know and, in fact, we don't. I can't say much about this "technique", since there's a lot which I bet will be explained as the books advance, but from the POV of someone who might not read the next stories, this can feel rather frustrating.
In this PNR world peope can use magic in some regions but the bigger the magic, the heavier the price. This is an interesting view on things, I admit, but as with so many PNR stories (or UF), the focus is on elements I no longer feel are enough to convince me to keep reading. There is no established romance but we kind of see where it might go? Still, aside from the hint of romance and a beat friend who lives in the country, there isn't a lot about Allie nor about her life that I feel is enough to convince me to follow her adventures. I'd prefer more coziness or perhaps more romance or even woman's fiction vibes here, because the way things are, I can simply decide to not read more.
We do learn how the boy was affected by someone's magic and it's doubtful why Allie's father, for all purposes a rich and powerful man, would need to use a boy to "pay the price" of magic. Things aren't that simple, but when we learn the motive of everything, makes sense yes but was not... outstanding.
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