Living in the age of teenage love stories that are staged around paranormally entwined teenagers, with characters that turn into werewolves or lust for blood, Kelley Armstrong brings a new angle to the phenomenon of teenage paranormal love: necromancers, sorcerers, a werewolf, a witch, a poltergeist with more to come in a sister series. In her Darkness Rising series, Kelley Armstrong grabs the hearts of teenage girls as they read and try to figure out which brother will win the heart of the prized Chloe Saunders.
Now Chloe is not any regular girl, she sees dead people, and her seeing these dead people ends her up in the Lyle house, which seems to be like a group home for troubled teens. Chloe starts snooping around and after hearing voices in the basement of the home, she realizes something is going on that isn’t really being showcased in the brochures for this place. She meets brothers Simon and Derek who couldn’t be any less alike. Simon is charming and obviously handsome while Derek is as big as a lineman with serious acne and attitude problems. Chemistry between Chloe and Simon leads to jealousy and hatred from Victoria, the queen bitch in the house. Chloe quickly befriends Liz and Simon while keeping an eye on Derek and Victoria.
Chloe’s seeing ghosts is quickly diagnosed as schizophrenia and she is given pills for an illness she doesn’t possess. After some recon with Derek, she soon finds out that she can raise bodies from the dead and can even speak to spirits. Derek and Chloe start investigating and soon realize that something is going on with the Lyle house and it’s sponsor, the Edison Group. The more time Chloe spends with Derek though, the less she seems to think about Simon…
Kelley Armstrong hits gold with her newer teen series that links the world she had created in her Otherworld series with a younger generation of readers. The Darkness Rising series has three books: The Summoning, The Awakening, and The Reckoning. Each book delves deeper into the love triangle between Simon, Derek, and Chloe, and follows the terror and complications that await the kids of Lyle house.
Being the nerd that I am, I have obviously read these books over and over again. Once I pick them up I can’t set them down! Armstrong has a way of holding your attention with the supernatural and paranormal aspects of her stories, all the while toying with your heartstrings and keeping you on your toes with the lovey-dovey aspects. You don’t know who to root for, Derek or Simon, until the very last page of the very last book. She strays from the typical storyline of today’s generation of supernatural novels and series. The twists and turns of the series will make your heart race, your skin crawl, and your eyes widen as she places her characters through hell and back to face the evil that is the Edison group. The best part is though, that this series has a sister series! There’s more to the story!
