Book Review: The Curse Keepers

The wall between our world and that of vengeful spirits has protected humanity for more than 400 years. It’s about to come crashing down.

Ellie Lancaster has lived her whole life by the site of the mysterious Lost Colony of Roanoke, the Virginia settlement that vanished without a trace around 1590. Only the descendants of the two men who banished the spirits of an enemy tribe from the material realm know what really happened to the colony. Ellie is one of those descendants—a Curse Keeper. Her father took pains to teach her what he knew of the curse and the responsibilities of its guardians. He taught her that if the two Curse Keepers ever meet, the curse will be lifted, the gate will open, and the raging Native American spirits will be unleashed to seek their revenge.

Despite her father’s seriousness, Ellie has always taken the legend for a harmless fairy tale. Until she meets the darkly handsome, but downright infuriating, Collin Dailey and realizes everything she was told is true. For when they meet, it’s like the air is sucked from the room. Collin’s presence is electrifying… and it’s not just attraction Ellie feels, but the inexorable pull toward her destiny. The prophecy is real, and now Ellie and Collin must battle supernatural forces and their loathing—and passion—for each other to set things right.

The Curse Keepers are all that stand between the world and its destruction.

*Arc provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

4 Stars

I liked Ellie, with her bumbling way. Just a small town girl trying to live a quiet life and pretending she isn’t destined for greatness. Her repression of everything to do with the Curse Keepers feels genuine considering a very traumatic event that happens in her childhood, and I bought her avoidance of her role.

And Collin, in turn, is completely justified in his actions towards her in the beginning; he’s not arrogant or a prick, he’s just frustrated in finding that his counterpart takes this nowhere near as seriously as he does. No, that’s not quite right, maybe he is an arrogant prick, but he never pretends to be otherwise and is straight forward about what he wants, and doesn’t want from Ellie.

It’s refreshing to see the banter between them feeling genuine. She knows she’s attracted to him and blames it on their connection and doesn’t let it get in the way. The sexual tension is definitely there and they both do a pretty good job of ignoring it for a long time because they’re both aware they don’t mesh and are trying to concentrate on the job at hand. I also like that she doesn’t fall for his lines when he’s trying to charm her into doing what he wants. And when they do finally start coming together, the growth in their relationship doesn’t feel contrived. They grew very slowly and painfully to trust each other and learn to work with each other’s personalities.

But, once they gave in to their feelings all of a sudden it felt too much too soon for me. I think in order to be true to Collin’s character there should have been a little more tension on his end, and he shouldn’t have given in so easily.

Some of the subplot was unnecessary but overall it didn’t take away from the story and I was still invested in the characters throughout.

I was impressed that Swank went through with the twist at the end because even with all the foreshadowing I was expecting a cop-out and a tidy resolution. That definitely didn’t happen here and it set up the characters nicely for some tension in the next book.

I’m definitely invested in reading the rest of the series and in finding out what happened to these characters.