What Does Kenny Rogers Have To Do With YA Paranormal?

Have you ever felt like you had been baited and hooked by a book series?  That is exactly how I felt about The Mystic Series.  I read book #1 in the series, Descension, and it was SO good.  I loved every single one of the characters and I couldn’t wait to give it a fantastic review, but before I did I started book #2, Impassion, and that review faded fast.  

What I loved about Descension was mainly the characters.  They were all just so intriguing.  From Travis (the gay co-worker) to Quin (the incredibly hot love interest) and of course, there’s Layla and her parents (who get their own little story – which I LOVED) they were all interesting in so many different ways.  But there is also this new twist on magic.  They call themselves witches and wizards, but they are unlike any I’ve read of before … awesome!  Then there is an element of danger, but it hasn’t really played out yet in the first book.

  

So what was the bait and hook?  Let me start out by stating that Layla is 21 so this isn’t a teen romance, but it was still listed under YA on Amazon.  In book #1 there is a sex scene between a man and woman who are engaged to be married (in the flashback to Layla’s parents), but it isn’t very graphic and was basically just sweet, so I didn’t really worry about it too much.  In book 2, despite the short amount of time they’ve known each other, suddenly Layla and Quin have their hands all over one another… I honestly didn’t get far enough into the book to find out if they eventually had sex because just the “make-out” sessions were so graphic I felt embarrassed reading them.  UGH!  And just when the rest of the story was getting good.

So bottom line is, by the time I was a little way into Impassion I basically gave it up.  I’m interested in the plot, but not enough to put up with that!  Honestly, authors should be a little more careful about how they market their books!  If you’re going to put stuff like that in there, take it out of the YA category (the #1 reason I read from this category is that books written for people my age almost always have too much graphic content).  This is honestly the first book I’ve ever returned for a refund because I felt so cheated by the categorizing of it. 

Not sure what lesson I learned in all this, except the same one Kenny Rogers sang about back in 1978: “…know when to walk away….”