Entice by Carrie Jones

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR NEED AND CAPTIVATE!

Synopsis

Zara and Nick are soul-mates – they’re meant to be together for ever. But that’s not quite how things have worked out. For starters, Nick is dead, and has been taken to Valhalla, a mystical resting place for warriors. If they can find the way there, Zara and her friends will try to get him back. But even if they do, Zara has turned pixie – and now she’s Astley’s queen!

Meanwhile, more teenagers go missing as a group of evil pixies devastates the town of Bedford. An all-out war seems imminent and Zara and her friends need all the warriors they can find . .

Entice starts immediately after the events of Captivate and Zara is getting ready for the school dance. She's got a great deal to take on board, what with Nick in Valhalla, her own pixie status and finding out that another of her friends is not as human as she thought. As a result the start of Entice is a bit low key. Zara is quite literally not herself and is now leaning on Astley for support and to help her find Nick. To add to Zara's load, her friend Devyn is being a little frosty with her. More high school boys are going missing and it's fair to say that Zara and co are not coping with the Pixie onslaught.

I must admit that I found the first part of this book a little hard to connect with - for some reason it felt a little stop start, if that makes sense. Zara is searching for the road to Valhalla in the hopes that it'll lead her to Nick and, rightly so, this forms the main part of the plot. However, I didn't slip into the book as I had with the previous two. It would be easy to say that this was because the start was a little slow but it wasn't. Anyway, by the time I was halfway through I was hooked as Astley and Zara struggle to find a key to get them what they need. Initially I worried that I wouldn't warm to Astley as he clearly has high hopes of Zara but as the book proceeds I felt a great deal of compassion for him.

Another great thing about Entice is the world building. As Zara starts to trust Astley more we get to see how the politics of the pixie world work. I'd love to see more of this in the next book as it really adds a little extra something. Zara and friends become a little more adventurous too and we start to see more of the area where they live. Issie is adorable as ever and I still found her and Zara's friendship touching and genuine. The final chapters of the book were exciting and suitably dramatic. I started the book unsure if I wanted to read more but finished excited to see what happens next.