Token of Darkness
Den of Shadows
By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Genre: YA Modern Fantasy

Number of Pages: 208

Date Started: April 16, 2016
Date Finished: April 18, 2016

Synopsis:(From Amazon)
Cooper Blake has everything going for him—until he wakes from a car accident with his football career in ruins and a mysterious, attractive girl by his side. Cooper doesn’t know how Samantha got there or why he can see her; all he knows is that she’s a ghost, and the shadows that surround her seem intent on destroying her.

No one from Cooper’s old life would understand what he can barely grasp himself. . . . But Delilah, the captain of the cheerleading squad, has secrets of her own, like her ability to see beyond the physical world, and her tangled history with Brent, a loner from a neighboring school who can hear strangers’ most intimate thoughts. Delilah and Brent know that Cooper is in more trouble than he realizes, and that Samantha may not be as innocent as she has led Cooper to believe. But the only way to figure out where Samantha came from will put them all in more danger than they ever dreamed possible.

Review:
I can’t explain adequately how let down I was with this book.  I grew up with Atwater-Rhodes original Den of Shadows books: In the Forests of the Night, Demon in my View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator– this was something different entirely.  I expected something on par with those books, which I had devoured multiple times during my young adult years, but this book was far from the mark.

It was great getting to see someone taken from a public position and show that they aren’t all that they appear to be, but the cheerleader scene is massively overdone in that regard.  There were some moments of true fright where as a reader you must wonder if the characters will survive, but the story overall seemed generic.  The characters are not fleshed out at all, and are stock characters– they fit in their niche of what you would think if you mentioned a stereotypical fill-in-the-blank.  It’s missing that spark and originality that Atwater-Rhodes books generally have.  It’s missing that dose of reality.

Honestly, a story that’s very much among the same vein but that I enjoyed a lot more is The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade, so maybe give that a shot instead.

Author Bio: (From Amazon)
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was 13 years old. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, all ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror List Selection; Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry; and Wyvernhail. Visit her online at www.ameliaatwaterrhodes.com. <– except this blog author checked, and this link merely brings you to the Penguin website.