Beautiful Sins: Leigha Lowery by Jennifer Hampton (Review request from author)

Target Audience: Teens/Young Adults
Genre: Dystopia/Fantasy

First of all I'd like to thank Jennifer for sending me this book for me to read, one because I love reading and two because this was one of my favourite books of the year so far :-)
I read a lot of fantasy, dark fantasy and dystopia novels and this one managed to blend all of this with a healthy dose of romance.

Beautiful Sins starts with a young girl called Leigha who moves with her mother and her mothers new boyfriend to Banks, Oregon where the skies are covered in dark cloud and myths and superstitions are everywhere. Leaving her home behind, and starting a new school, Leigha quickly finds out that things aren't as they seem and soon finds herself attracting the attention of Prince Alexander, son of the ruling king of the dark coast, and as time goes on she realises that there's more to her new home than she realised.

There wasn't one bad thing about this book, it was well written and very easy to read. I was so absorbed in the story that I lost track of time really quickly and had to remind myself that I was due at work :-p

Leigha was a wonderful main lead, although she strikes me as a magnet to accidents since I lost track of the number of times she lost consciousness, but in honesty with the things that happen to her, I'm not really surprised, and it was a relief to have a character reacting normally to stress rather than being super strong and resilient. I mean, I'd like to see any normal person stay conscious on having your whole world tipped upside down.

The story itself was fantastic and I loved all the twists and turns and the each revelation, I found the world that Jennifer has created to be truly fascinating and I found it easy to imagine the world in the way it's described.  Part of me would love to visit Banks as it is in this book, just to see it for myself, I imagine it would be pretty exciting and yet very scary,
If you want to read a book that takes old ideas of Vampires, Were's and dystopia worlds and then breathes new life into them...Read this book! It's fast paced, a little scary, romantic, has some seriously hot men in it (swooning for Alex here!) and has a cliffhanger that will leave you on the edge of your seat. An excellent novel, and I can't wait to read more of Miss Hampton's work.