Sci-Fi & Scary

Shadow Weaver is an atmospheric, haunting story that immediately ensnares the reader. This may be written for a middle grade audience, but it begs for adult readership as well. MarcyKate Connolly weaves a tale that keeps you trapped in her world until the very end.

Emmeline is a child that's easy to like and want to protect. Also, like most children she's also easy to manipulate and scare. Throughout the story I continually wanted to step into the pages and mother her. To whisper in her ear the truths that she needed to hear. To watch her story unfold, knowing that she had to discover things for herself, was almost painful. But her Shadow Weaver journey was exquisitely told.

Shadow Weaver is a book that will draw me back to it for more than one read. And when the second book comes out (for this is part one of a duology), I'll be reading it as well. Emmeline and Lucas could be extremely powerful together and seeing these two kids take on the evil introduced in this first book will be well worth the wait.

One of the other things I liked about Shadow Weaver (not that there was anything I didn't like) was the resolution with Dar. I'm not going to say what it was, but the author handled it very nicely. She could have went a few typical routes but she didn't. And while I'm almost positive the solution will come back and bite them in the butt, I'm still happy things ended the way they did.

Well-written, with believable dialogue, nicely paced action, and fantasy kept on a level easy for middle-grade readers to understand, Shadow Weaver is an exquisite example of how to write darker fantasy for kids. MarcyKate Connolly did a phenomenal job, and I will be shocked if Shadow Weaver doesn't make it onto the best seller lists for middle grade fiction. I loved it!