Review: The Survivors by Amanda Havard

Book Description via Goodreads:

Hardcover, 283 pages

March 29, 2011, Chafie Press

In 1692, when witch trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of them survived.

The Survivors is the first installment of the tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries. Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter, dares to abandon the family's sacred hiding place. But no matter how far Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.

On a muggy summer night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her from the human world she's sought to belong to for over a century and send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters, dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the search for her own mortality. After all...

HOW DO YOU KILL A SURVIVOR?

The Survivors will steal your heart and invade your mind. Fall into the pages of Sadie's life, a world so frighteningly similar to your own, you'll find yourself wanting to go to the Montana mountains to find the Survivors for yourself.

And it is only the beginning.

Source: Chafie Press & Amanda Havard (Thank you!)

My Thoughts:

I found Sadie likable. She was trying to fit in among humans after more than a century of being protected and hidden behind the gates of her family’s secret city in Montana. After being isolated for so many years, she was right in the middle of humanity, being able to sense their feelings and observe their behavior firsthand. I loved her narration. Despite being immortal, she did not boast about it. Unlike most heroines, she was aware of her charm and her beauty but she was still humble. I liked her protectiveness of Corrina, her first human friend. I was fond of supernatural creatures with human emotions and human thoughts like Sadie.

Sadie’s family, the Survivors, was one of a kind. Their elders, the first Survivors who were exiled from Salem, had strong and somewhat strange ideas of what a family should be. Their purpose was deeply rooted in God but at the same time they overlook some of the teachings in the Bible. I have never encountered supernatural creatures that practice this. It was one of the things that really intrigued me. Throughout the years, they have believed that they were the only ones who were gifted with immortality and powers.

I loved the twists in the mythology! Havard has a very unique take on the paranormal. The eretica from Russia were startlingly hideous and creepy. The nosferatu shape shifters reminded me of a pack of werewolves. They were quite feral but deep inside, they were humans. It was good that there was a blend of Russian and Romanian mythologies with that of the usual mythologies of the Salem Witches and vampires.

While Sadie spent her days learning about humanity and fitting in, she travelled all over the world to look for ways to find her way to rest, to death. Even though she was searching for an end, she never failed to enjoy life to the fullest. She lived in style. Her too-long life has proven to be more than enough. Without her desire to stay with her family, she had no more reason to stay alive, to prolong her life. From time to time, there would be a memoir from Sadie’s perspective. These showed a younger Sadie who was brimming with questions and thoughts.

I found the romance to be perfectly sweet with a hint of hesitation. It was quite clean but there were passionate moments too. It was done well, not too cliché and not too ordinary. It was just right. Cole Hardwick was the gorgeous perfect gentleman that Sadie met in Corrina’s wedding. But there were too many limitations and complications with a human, unlike with Everett Winters. He was immortal too. He reciprocated Sadie’s feelings and he could be with her forever.

The Survivors is a promising debut and an incredibly unique paranormal romance. Unputdownable, engaging, realistic and dark, I promise this is unlike any other Salem-Witch-Trials-inspired-book. I was hooked right from the start. I recommend this to fans of paranormal romance and to those who seek novels about witches, shape shifters and vampires!

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