Review: Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong

Title: Waking the Witch
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Series: Women of the Otherworld #11
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: July 27, 2010
Publisher: Dutton
Edition: Hardback
Blurb:
The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah is a terrifyingly powerful young witch who has never been able to resist the chance to throw her magical weight around. But at 21 she knows she needs to grow up and prove to her guardians, Paige and Lucas, that she can be a responsible member of their supernatural detective agency. So she jumps at the chance to fly solo, investigating the mysterious deaths of three young women in a nearby factory town as a favor to one of the agency's associates. At first glance, the murders look garden-variety human, but on closer inspection signs point to otherworldly stakes.

Soon Savannah is in over her head. She's run off the road and nearly killed, haunted by a mystery stalker, and freaked out when the brother of one of the dead women is murdered when he tries to investigate the crime. To complicate things, something weird is happening to her powers. Pitted against shamans, demons, a voodoo-inflected cult and garden-variety goons, Savannah has to fight to ensure her first case isn't her last. And she also has to ask for help, perhaps the hardest lesson she's ever had to learn.


We met Savannah in the 2nd book of the series when she was a kid. Through the books we've seen her grow up and finally, in this novel, we get her as the main character.
Not much has changed since the first time we saw her; she's still trying to prove herself and she's also impulsive, independent and hard-headed. After all the time she's being working as Paige and Lucas' assistant, she finally has a case to work on her own after both of them are on vacation.
She thinks it's going to be an easy case, but she couldn't have been more wrong.

Savannah spends most of the book on her own: a little town where people are not really helpful and where she doesn't get much cooperation. It was really interesting seeing her trying to gather information and also her rivalries with the others that were investigating at the same time.

Some parts of the book, especially at the beginning, were a little slow and there were sometimes when I wanted more action. I felt like Savannah investigated a lot of things, but they got her nowhere. I was expecting more of her but she didn't deliver most of the time.
There were some parts a really liked, such as the ones that included the detective Michael Kennedy or Kayla, the young daughter of one of the victims. In those parts you could see a softer side of Savannah, and how she relates and tries to comfort a kid that reminds her of herself.

If you've read the previous books of this series, you'll know that Savannah has always had a crush on Adam, Paige's best friend. I loved seeing these two interact with each other, especially when she blames herself for things that are not her fault and Adam is the only one that's there to comfort her and guide her the best he can. Their relationship is unique, and after reading the ending of the book I think they're going to get closer to each other than ever.

The book, while not the best of the series, is entertaining and it works well enough as the first book of the Savannah trilogy. After the ending the book had, I can't wait to get my hands into Spellbound, the next book.


Memorable Lines:

Jesse followed me up the stairs. “I guess the daughter of Eve Levine and Kristof Nast doesn't need to worry about strangers attacking her in an empty office.”
“If they do, I can always use them for my next ritual sacrifice. Volunteers are so hard to come by.”
It‟s not the sort of crack you should make when you have a notorious dark witch for a mother and an equally notorious cutthroat sorcerer for a father. It was a test of sorts, and Jesse passed, just laughing and saying, “I‟ll watch my step then.”


Previous Books:
1. Bitten
2. Stolen
3. Dime Store Magic
4. Industrial Magic
5. Haunted
6. Broken
7. No Humans Involved
8. Personal Demon
9. Living with the Dead
10. Frost Bitten


Next Book:
12. Spellbound (Summer 2011)


Rating: 1/2


* I received this book from the publisher for review.