Dark & Twisted Games is the first book in the Hearts of Faeylon Series and pretty much the first book I have read by Heidi. I love fantasy, so when reviewers were requested, I volunteered though I had plenty on my plate already. I will be honest, I was not sure what to make of the blurb at first and could not quickly decide what my feelings toward the book were going to be. I will also say, that I really liked the cover quite a bit.
There are quite a few stereotypical elements to this book like the unpopular girl Eden being besties with the popular and the whole super gorgeous brothers everyone wants to date, one being a football star and all. See, basically nothing new in terms of plot lines. However, no one ever said stories always needed to be crazy original; there is nothing wrong with the classics, which is why they are classics. I always feel like the talent resides in the small twists and changes that are added that make the story stand out.
There we meet Eden, seems to be a nice girl, labeled a freak stuck in a small town and living with her crazy aunt. Then comes the boy, I meant boys and we meet Cardelian and Jaxson two brothers and recently moved in foster kids. Cardelian is the gorgeous star athlete that all the girls are fawning about and well Jaxson equally as gorgeous is more the angsty loner type and the one Eden fancies.
Based on the blurb, I was sitting on the edge of my bed waiting for something to happen, but it takes its sweet sweet time, Eden has an encounter in the forest with a creature with glowy red eyes and things go pretty much to hell from there.
There is a part of me that wanted to see that moment happen faster in the story, you know my usual impatience for the good stuff and even after that happened, it wasn’t all that straight forward from there either.
I think one of the smart thing that Heidi did a lot of misdirection in terms of the characters and the interesting part was the back story of Eden’s aunt who was kidnapped by Aliens. When Eden had her encounter with “red eyes” I figured something was up, but I will not say because I do not want to spoilt it for you guys.
Though slow at times, the book is an easy read and I finished it in one go. The plot though nothing out of this world is still nicely done and with plenty of surprises and twists to make it really interesting. Eden was certainly an interesting character with a really sad and yet bizarre back story to make her stand out, though the boys were too easy to figure out but when you dig deeper, you get a few surprises.
All in all, it is really a cool book and I am curious to see where the story goes next, I do wish we ended the book on something more solid in terms of finality or even a major cliffhanger but it is done now. I do believe there is a lot that can be done to the story, and it is really quite nice. I certainly do not regret reading it and I will be following it to the end.
To be honest, it was the perfect book to read on my rainy Saturday afternoon with my cuppa tea steaming next to me.
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