Firelight by Sophie Jordan

Target Audience: Teens/Young Adults

Genre: Fantasy/Romance

I have mixed feelings about this book because it had me up and down in my opinion of it like a roller coaster.

Rather than end on a down note, i'm going to explain the drop in one level of rating at the beginning of my review.

The main reason for this was simply because around the middle of the novel nothing seemed to be happening. To me, it became a lot like a backwards and forwards love story (girl wants boy, girl tries to stay away from boy, girl again ends up near boy, then, oh dear, i must stay away from boy) it got a bit tedious.

However, this did even out in the end, hence the loss of only one level of rating and not more.

Right now that that's done, i'll explain myself a little more as to why i actually liked the book (that's if you've put up with my babbling so far and still want to read further)

Firelight is about a species known as Draki (who are the descendants of dragons) and they all tend tp have special gifts such as fire breather, super strength, ability to find gemstones etc. There major gift though is the ability to manifest into human form as there ultimate disguise..
Jacinda is a young Draki and in an act of rebellion she and her friend Azure decide to fly in daylight. They narrowly escape being hunted but as a result, Jacinda, her sister Tamra and her mother have to flee to avoid what the pride might do to Jacinda for breaking the rules.

Up until this point it's all action and then we have the love story that starts with a fellow pupil at her new school called Will, who for reasons that become obvious, is not the ideal person for her (i won't post any spoilers here though)

As i've already mentioned, my main gripe was the dragged out centre part of the novel, but there were other wonderful things throughout that kept me reading.
One of these things was how different the actual story was. Yes, there was a major focus on the romance, but the reason for the romance initially starts out different. It isn't a case of boy meets girl. It's very hard to describe, but you'll understand it better if you read it.

Event wise, there are multiple twists and turns throughout and last few chapters were purely exilirating and non-stop, resulting in a cliff-hanger that made me feel there were pages missing at the end of the book! And i have to wait for the sequel to discover what happens...shocking!

On a character basis, i do have major sympathy for Jacinda. She's very hard on herself and keeps referring to herself as selfish for ruining Tamra's new life. But in my opnion, Tamra is just as selfish, always resenting Jacinda for who she is and with her and her mother always trying to control her, it had me wondering, who really is the selfish person in the story? For sure, if Jacinda is, then her mother and sister can't be far off. Or maybe i'm alone in thiking that?

Will is brilliant, and i want to find a sweet and loving guy like that (don't we all? lol). The plot twist surrounding him was completely out of the blue and i was literally astounded.
His relationship with Jacinda seemed very real and the phrase; true love conquers all comes to mind, well for the most part anyway.

All in all, a romantic and original fantasy novel that fans of fantasy romance will love. I will be reading the next in the series, although i am hoping i don't have to read any more backwards/forwards relationship issues. Having said that, bring on the next in the series!