Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising
Dark Shadows: The Salem Branch, Book #2By Lara Parker ISBN# 978-0-7653-3259-2 Author’s Website: http://laraparkersite.blogspot.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Jacki
Synopsis:
The first all-new Dark Shadows novel in years, written by Lara Parker, one of the stars of the cult classic TV show!
When a portrait is lost that has maintained Quentin Collins’s youthful appearance for over a century—and has also kept his werewolf curse at bay—Quentin begins to dread the full moon.
Meanwhile, David, the sixteen-year-old heir to the Collins fortune, has fallen in love with Jacqueline, a young girl living at the Old House who is the reincarnation of Angelique. David and Jacqueline are swept back in time to the prohibition era of the Twenties, where David uncovers the dark secrets of the Collins family history.
Most threatening of all, Dr. Nathanial Blair, an expert in the paranormal, has come to Collinwood because he suspects they are harboring a vampire. Fortunately, Barnabas Collins has returned to his coffin after a disastrous flirtation with life as a human. Nevertheless, what Blair discovers places the entire Collins family in jeopardy. (Amazon.com)
Review:
This was the first book I have read of the Dark Shadows series and I think I would have enjoyed this book a bit more if I would have started at the beginning. I feel I am lacking some of the great back-story some of Parker’s other readers will have by reading her previous two books or by seeing some of the television. I feel because the lack of knowledge in this series I was not able to appreciate this book as much as I could have under different circumstances. So, if you have not read the other books I would suggest taking the time to read those before embarking on this journey.
With that being said, the writing style Parker uses to create her books’ world is intriguingly descriptive. My general rule of thumb is to give a book 100 pages to grab me otherwise I tend to lay it down and move on to the next one in my stack and on page 83 Parker grabbed me when she wrote:
“When the largest key found the lock, David jiggled it back and forth, and tantalizingly, but with some rusty resistance, the bolt drew”
Wow! What a way to describe the simple task of unlocking a door!
Parker interweaves multiple story lines consisting of the Collins’s family money, family secrets and his undeniable love for Jacqueline. All are powerful and intriguing stories to the reader, but for me it was the family secrets that captured my attention. When Parker wrote:
“It became one more secret of the family, never to be mentioned again,”
I knew I would have to finish this book to learn what secrets the Collins family had and also to see if David and Jacqueline ended up with one another in the end.
