From Amazon:

When young women start dying, Boston cop Samantha Ryan is the perfect person to investigate, for only she knows what the archais symbol carved into their flesh means. The last in a long line of ruthless witches, she grew up in a coven seduced by power and greed. And now she's sure that bad witches have returned to Salem. Reluctantly, Samantha goes undercover-into a town obsessed with black magic, into her terrifying past, and into the dark, newly awakened heart of evil.

My Thoughts:

Whenever I think of witches, I always picture a mixture of both good and evil, just as there are both types of normal people. I just figure that it doesn't take a supernatural power to be evil, so why wouldn't there be some good ones as well? The author does seem to brush on this as she separates the witches out from the more benevolent Wiccans who believe in not harming others. The witches in The Thirteenth Sacrifice are nothing short of pure evil, with Samantha being the only possible exception, and even she struggles to stay on the side of good. The greed for power is so all consuming to them that they commit unspeakable acts, and definitely ratcheted up the creepy factor in this book. Witch meets cop...at times you can't be sure which one was really the winner. ( )

A friend picked this up for me at the grocery store because I was sad that I had finished a book and the next on my que was unavailable at the time. I was pleasantly surprised and intend to continue with the series! ( )

Samantha was a witch along with her mother, a dark witch in a powerful coven that practised the darkest of arts. Sacrifice and demons were not unknown in their pursuit of power – until she turned 12 and a horrific ritual went terribly wrong and the deeply traumatised Samantha was the only survivor.

She has a new life now. New parents, a new faith and a new job, as a cop no less. Her past is behind her. At least, she thought it was until a murdered young woman revealed a pattern of ritual murder victims. Dark witches were back in the area and, worse, they have ties to her old home, her old life and her old coven.

She is the only police officer who can possibly infiltrate and expose this new coven, the only person who can save countless possibly future lives – but doing so means facing the demons of her past and becoming everything she has fought so hard to avoid.

I liked this story a lot; it managed to draw me in very quickly and kept me hooked through the duration. We have some very compelling characters, a pretty original world and a plot that moves ideally.

I won’t say the plot is especially twisty; once we have an idea of what is going on after the first, say, third to half of the book, the rest is pretty guessable. I could see roughly what was happening and how the book would end once the reasons behind the murders had been unearthed – but that didn’t make the plot dull. I knew the end but getting there was still very interesting with its own revelations and explorations. I think if you’re going to write a book with an ending that is at least roughly known then it becomes important to keep the plot moving (otherwise you get the “get on with it!” sensation) and it’s important to put enough other elements in the book to keep it fascinating.

And this book succeeded on all counts. At no point did I feel the book was dragging things out; Samantha is very on target. Once the bodies are discovered she focuses on finding out how and why they died. Once that is discovered, she focuses on infiltrating and bringing down the coven. She doesn’t get sidetracked, she doesn’t twiddle her thumbs and she doesn’t curl up in a corner – she gets on with it and the book is always moving forwards

The book also had some really good twists along the way – the rage and hatred flaring up against witches turned out to be much more involved than I imagined. And we had Samantha herself confronting her buried demons of her past.

I think this book served as an excellent introduction book. The plot was good but also served as an excellent frame work on which the world could be built with it’s interesting, involved and well researched magic system and the complex protagonist could be introduced and show cased all without excessive info dumping

I did like the portrayal of Samantha’s trauma in this book. This is always shaky ground because Urban Fantasy is so full of dead or absent parents, horrific childhoods, abuse, torture etc etc etc – in fact, an Urban Fantasy protagonist with living parents and a happy childhood is really really rare; so I did look at another example with a lot of skepticism. But as far as this overused trope went, it was well done. The trauma fit the story and the character, it wasn’t an unnecessary addition just for the sake of it to provide quick and easy “development”. It was an integral part of what she was, the path she’d taken and the character she’d become.

Read More ( )

Samantha was a witch along with her mother, a dark witch in a powerful coven that practised the darkest of arts. Sacrifice and demons were not unknown in their pursuit of power – until she turned 12 and a horrific ritual went terribly wrong and the deeply traumatised Samantha was the only survivor.

She has a new life now. New parents, a new faith and a new job, as a cop no less. Her past is behind her. At least, she thought it was until a murdered young woman revealed a pattern of ritual murder victims. Dark witches were back in the area and, worse, they have ties to her old home, her old life and her old coven.

She is the only police officer who can possibly infiltrate and expose this new coven, the only person who can save countless possibly future lives – but doing so means facing the demons of her past and becoming everything she has fought so hard to avoid.

I liked this story a lot; it managed to draw me in very quickly and kept me hooked through the duration. We have some very compelling characters, a pretty original world and a plot that moves ideally.

I won’t say the plot is especially twisty; once we have an idea of what is going on after the first, say, third to half of the book, the rest is pretty guessable. I could see roughly what was happening and how the book would end once the reasons behind the murders had been unearthed – but that didn’t make the plot dull. I knew the end but getting there was still very interesting with its own revelations and explorations. I think if you’re going to write a book with an ending that is at least roughly known then it becomes important to keep the plot moving (otherwise you get the “get on with it!” sensation) and it’s important to put enough other elements in the book to keep it fascinating.

And this book succeeded on all counts. At no point did I feel the book was dragging things out; Samantha is very on target. Once the bodies are discovered she focuses on finding out how and why they died. Once that is discovered, she focuses on infiltrating and bringing down the coven. She doesn’t get sidetracked, she doesn’t twiddle her thumbs and she doesn’t curl up in a corner – she gets on with it and the book is always moving forwards

The book also had some really good twists along the way – the rage and hatred flaring up against witches turned out to be much more involved than I imagined. And we had Samantha herself confronting her buried demons of her past.

I think this book served as an excellent introduction book. The plot was good but also served as an excellent frame work on which the world could be built with it’s interesting, involved and well researched magic system and the complex protagonist could be introduced and show cased all without excessive info dumping

I did like the portrayal of Samantha’s trauma in this book. This is always shaky ground because Urban Fantasy is so full of dead or absent parents, horrific childhoods, abuse, torture etc etc etc – in fact, an Urban Fantasy protagonist with living parents and a happy childhood is really really rare; so I did look at another example with a lot of skepticism. But as far as this overused trope went, it was well done. The trauma fit the story and the character, it wasn’t an unnecessary addition just for the sake of it to provide quick and easy “development”. It was an integral part of what she was, the path she’d taken and the character she’d become.


Read More
( )

Samantha wanted to put her past behind her. She was doing a pretty good job of it as a detective when bodies started being discovered with very specific, but strange markings on them. She knew what they meant - that somehow members from the coven she grew up in had resurfaced (even though they were all supposed to be gone). Samantha decided to go undercover, finding herself back in the coven world she wanted so desperately to put behind her.

The mystery Viguie weaves is fairly simple to follow, but that didn't take away from the fear factor and drama of the story. And while concept of witches was found within the story, it wasn't ultra heavy on paranormal or fantasy (though I do enjoy a really good Urban Fantasy). I thought that the characters were well developed and I thought that the cadence of the story was well done. I am glad that I won this book through first reads and I will definitely watch for another book in this series. ( )