Review: Elemental Lies by Elle Middaugh with Giveaway

ELEMENTAL LIES

by Elle Middaugh

The Essential Elements, #2

July 24th 2017

YA Fantasy

Valerie Moore is an Elemental, a person who commands one of the classical elements of wind, water, fire, or earth. She’s special, though. She controls two—fire and water—though sometimes it seems like they control her.

After the accidental exposure of Elementals to humanity, Valerie finds herself—and all of her kind—struggling to attain equality. Three different groups fight to secure leadership, and with all of their hidden agendas, she doesn’t know which side to choose. The balance between peaceful cohabitation and all-out war is precarious, at best.
When a chance meeting brings Val and earth Elemental Cade Landston back together, everything changes. She realizes what she knew in the beginning—that he’s the one she wants. Her desire to win him over draws her closer to him, and his vengeful mission to hunt down her murderous grandfather brings them both closer to trouble.
From mysterious doppelgangers to reckless rescue missions, scapegoat bombings, and evolving Elemental powers, Valerie strains to keep up.
All she knows is she must stop her grandfather at all costs. To do so, she has to figure out the truth, but how can she do so when almost everyone she knows has been telling lies?

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MY TIDBITS

Struggles from many different sides make this a read full of unexpected twists and turns.

The world has changed. Now, each group of Elementals is fighting to find their place and all have their own secret plans to gain power. Valerie is caught up in between, not sure which side she should join. But one thing is clear, she needs to set aside all differences and take the help of her comrades to stop a much greater evil.

There's a lot going on in these pages, and it's a lovely play of shades of gray with only one very dark spot of evil. Layers of intrigue build up around every bend, making it difficult to decipher what plans for power lay where. It's the way Valerie and her group fight past all of this to pull together and fight off the one thing that can destroy them all, which makes this an interesting and grabbing read. The pace stays high the whole way through with tons of action and surprises. 

The characters, at least many of them, have quite a bit of depth and are more than they seem to be. They made this a very interesting read. Valerie on the other hand, was hard to grasp at times. While she usually came across as a wonderful heroine to root for, sometimes her decisions and the way she handled others was simply frustrating and made her hard to like. The constant tide changes in romance interests wasn't really my thing, but it didn't jerk out of the plot either.

All in all, this is an entertaining read which promises to keep the reader pinned to the pages the whole way through. 

Sequel to:

And here she is. . .

 

Elle Middaugh lives in the Allegheny Mountains outside of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, with her wonderful husband and three beautiful children. Most of her time is spent raising kids, writing stories, playing video games, reading, and attempting to keep a clean house.
She’s a proud Navy wife, a frazzle-brained mother, a fan of health and fitness, a lover of hot tea and iced tea, and a believer in happily ever afters. 

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