Review: Raven by Stacey Rourke

Cover Source: GoodReads.com

Title: Rave

Author: Stacey Rourke

Series: The Legends Saga #2

Version Reviewed: Finished, eBook

Website: www.rourkewrites.weebly.com

*I purchased this book myself.*

GoodReads Summary:

An infamous love, destined nevermore,
For death could not claim, the enchanting Lenore.
Cursed by the malevolent spirit of the Headless Horseman, Ireland Crane ventures to Manhattan in search of a way to break her soul crushing bond. Instead, she discovers the lines between fact and fiction are blurring once more. Croaking ravens. Telltale hearts. Could the works of Poe be coming to pass with handsome Wall Street Midas Ridley Peolte as their unwilling target?
She walks the Earth, a plague on mankind,
searching for he, her rotted heart doth pine.
Together, the two unknowingly release a dark force death itself could not tame. Surrounded by the unrelenting violence and mayhem they’ve unleashed, Ireland feels her control over the Horseman slipping. Before the beast within consumes her, she and her crew must follow the clues of the dead to right a centuries’ old wrong. Will it be enough to sate the Horseman’s appetite?
Hell hath no fury like a ghoul scorned.

Review:
Oh, this series.  Stacey Rourke is twiddling my heartstrings and quickly becoming an auto-buy author for me even though I've only read two of her books.

The Legends Saga is absolutely AMAZING.  There's really no other way I could put it. The way she weaves the past and the present and brings old fiction to modern day with a twist of truth and makes each one of these characters and stories her own. It's simply wonderful.

The first book, Crane, had it's creepy moments.  I mean, it's inspired by Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and you can't do the Headless Horseman without a little spook.  But Raven brought the creep-level to entirely new heights. The curse that poor Edgar (and later Ridley) had to endure is an absolutely terrible affliction and would easily drive anyone to madness.  The spirits in this book were malicious and eery  and determined to drive the cursed into oblivion. More than once I found myself a little creeped out and loving every minute of it.  I might just have to see if I can give away a set of these books during Haunted Halloween.

If the story itself draws you in, then the characters are just the icing on the cake.  They're so insanely believable and loveable that you don't want to let them go.  Rourke weaves the tales so well that, at times, you honestly have to wonder if maybe some of it wasn't true. If some of these "legends" weren't true. In that way, making you believe in fiction, these books kind of remind me of those of Seth Grahame-Smith. Abraham Licoln: Vampire Hunter, for example.

It was really neat to see how she twisted Edgar Allan Poe (although I was bothered that she spelled his name, Allen, with an E instead of an A), his lost love Lenore and all the horrors he crafted so long ago.  Poe has always been a favorite of mine and I loved every second of this book.

I'm eager to get to Steam, the next book in the series, because it also deals with two things that I love very very much and have always been fascinated in.  The Salem Village Witch Trials and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne have always been very close to my heart.  I've been obsessed with Salem since I was old enough to know what it was about and I was, like, one of the only kids in school that actually enjoyed  reading The Scarlet Letter. When most of my classmates were complaining because they thought it was boring, I was eating the story up.  I've always loved it and I absolutely cannot wait to see what Rourke does with this next work of fiction!

Rating: 5 Stars.
Character: Poe & Rip.
Favorite Quote: "In my eyes you... will always be... a hero."