Entice by Carrie Jones

Entice:
Zara and Nick are soul mates, meant to be together forever.
But that's not quite how things have worked out.

For starters, well, Nick is dead.
Supposedly, he's been taken to a mythic place for warriors known as Valhalla, so Zara and her friends might be able to get him back. But it's taking time, and meanwhile a group of evil pixies is devastating Bedford, with more teens going missing every day. An all-out war seems imminent, and the good guys need all the warriors they can find. But how to get to Valhalla?

And even if Zara and her friends discover the way, there's that other small problem: Zara's been pixie kissed. When she finds Nick, will he even want to go with her? Especially since she hasn't just turned...she's Astley's queen.



Carrie Jones delves right into the action with this, the third installment in her series. Despite how much I enjoyed the intriguing story and plot twists, I found myself disconnected from the characters. I felt that Zara was annoyingly repetitive in speaking about her old life before the pixies, and I honestly felt a stronger connection to Astley than anyone else. Since her transformation from half-breed to full pixie, Zara is met with hesitation from her friends and she is constantly trying to prove that she is still Zara, still good. Astley, the pixie king that kissed Zara and changed her into his queen, is determined to find the path to Valhalla in order to keep Zara happy. He works tirelessly looking for leads, but each one they discover leads them into danger and they discover that betrayal can come from surprising places. The path to Valhalla is wrought with danger and lives are sacrificed in the search for Odin’s lands and Zara begins to lose hope that they will ever get Nick back. Despite her misgivings, Zara and her friends refuse to give up the search, trusting Astley is hard for the others but Zara has faith in his ability to find Valhalla. The true identity of Frank (the pixie terrorizing Zara’s small town and the one who killed Nick) is revealed and most shocking is how close to Astley he truly is. Zara is afraid that Nick won’t be able to look past his natural hatred for pixies. And when she reaches Valhalla to bring him home, she must battle and defeat Frank to earn Nick’s freedom, or lose him forever as he becomes one of Odin’s warriors.