A Study In Shifters
Majanka Verstraete
(The Adventures of Marisol Holmes, #1)
Publication date: June 26th 2018
Genres: Paranormal, Young Adult
Seventeen-year-old Marisol Holmes may be the great-great-great granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes, but it’s hard to live up to the family name when only one mistake can spell your downfall. After trusting the wrong guy in a case gone totally wrong, Marisol convinces the Conclave, an underground organization of detectives solving supernatural cases, to give her a last chance to prove her worth, and maybe even heal her broken heart
After all, as a half-blood jaguar shifter, Marisol is uniquely qualified to solve this murder—and every scrap of evidence points toward the culprit being a fellow jaguar shifter. But is one of her own people involved, or is this all a ploy to kick Marisol’s mother off the shifter throne?
Then Marisol discovers her best friend, Roan, is missing, and maybe the killer’s next target. The stakes just got higher than political intrigue. Just when things couldn’t get worse, Marisol’s ex-boyfriend-turned-nemesis, Mannix, starts leaving sinister clues for her. Marisol fears this case might be far more personal than she could’ve imagined.
It’s time for Marisol to prove her worth, or her people could fall into chaos while her best friend loses his life.
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Excerpt:
“So,” Mother said with disdain written all over her face, “they took you back.”
I licked my lips. I could face any adversary and come up with a solid action
plan, but around Mother, I was as dim and cowardly as a mouse. I dug my nails into
my palms and forced myself to stand up straight. “They did.”
“Of course they did.” Mother crossed her legs. She was wearing an expensive
white designer suit. It looked impeccable. If I had worn something like that, it would
be dirt-stained in seconds. “You have your father’s mind and his gift for antics. The
very two qualities that got him killed.”
She liked to focus on that. My father’s death. Him being murdered. Her
suspicions about his job at the Conclave—the very thing that got him killed.
With other people, I could often tell why they did what they did, but my mother
was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, at least to me. I had no idea if she seemed so
keen to remind me of my father’s early demise out of motherly concern for me and
fear that the same fate might await me, or because it was her way of trying to get me
to fit into her vision of what a shifter princess should be like, which obviously didn’t
include nightly escapades into nightmarishly dark catacombs.
Mother’s hand closed around the amulet she had around her neck, and I saw
the anguish reflected in her eyes. Despite our differences and despite how cold she
was toward me since the Big Betrayal, Mother did care for me. And she had cared for
my father, too. She hardly ever mentioned it, but it was obvious: she still wore the
amulet he had given her, kept it safe like a relic.
“Balthy— I mean, Mr. Rollins was reluctant to take me back.”
Mother crunched up her nose when I mentioned Rollins. Since he was one of
the leaders of the snake clan, a royal just like my mother, she knew him well, and she
despised him just as much as I did.
“I expect one day that man will be unable to change back to his original
appearance after shifting into a snake,” I said. “He’s taken on more and more
characteristics of a viper.”
The most powerful shifters, those who shifted often, started to mimic the
behavior of their shifting animal, even when in their human form. My mother, too,
suffered from this. She was a jaguar shifter, a royal, powerful, fierce animal. As she
moved, she was equally as regal, equally as strong, even in her human form.
Sometimes looking at her was like looking at an ever-changing canvas or at a TV
screen frozen between two images: a woman at first, a jaguar the next moment, and
sometimes if you looked at the right moment, something in between.
Because my father had been a human, shifting had never come as easily for
me as it did for full-blood shifters. And now, of course, it didn’t work at all anymore.
Author Bio:Author Majanka Verstraete has written more than twenty unique works of fiction. A native of Belgium, Majanka’s novels explore the true nature of monsters: the good, the bad, and just about every species in between. Her young adult books include the acclaimed Mirrorland (YA Dark Fantasy) and Angel of Death (YA Paranormal) series of novels. At MHB, Majanka is currently developing a new YA shifter series with a fresh take on fierce female detectives called THE ADVENTURES OF MARISOL HOLMES.
When she’s not writing, Majanka is probably playing World of Warcraft or catching up with the dozens of TV series she’s addicted to.
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Thanks for being on the tour!
ReplyDeleteThis look good, and while I don't always pick up YA, this is a genre I enjoy when I do
ReplyDelete