ARC – Meara by Anya Wylde

Thanks to Anta Wylde for providing me with this very enjoyable read!

Themes: YA fantasy, romance, mythology

The synopsis

Meara lives an ordinary life with her eccentric grandmother and three siblings in a small Georgian house in Dublin. On her eighteenth birthday, her little sister is kidnapped by an incredibly powerful man, and her entire world turns upside down.
A whisper of someone like her being born has been discussed for aeons by the gods. The question is, who is she, and where is she?
Meara lives an ordinary life with her eccentric grandmother and three siblings in a small Georgian house in Dublin. On her eighteenth birthday, her little sister is kidnapped by an incredibly powerful man, and her entire world turns upside down.
Long hidden family secrets tumble out, and supernatural beings suddenly surround her. However, she thinks she is a side character, the hero’s friend and the heroine’s sister. After all, her nature is more girl-next-door than a tortured soul with ninja fighting skills.
Her only desire is to get her sister back and keep her safe but to do so, she must battle dangerous beings and reign in her treacherous heart, which has begun to beat for her family’s sworn enemy, a gorgeous demigod.

The review

I went into this book knowing pretty much nothing apart from the fact that Meara, our heroine, is living in Dublin and that the story should be funny. And it was indeed!

I was utterly lost in the beginning, I had no idea what was going on, pretty much like our main character. You know, the feeling you have while reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Yup, that’s it. And even if the story became clearer and clearer with each chapter, this feeling never totally disappeared.

Overall, I think this is a very good YA book. I mean, it succeeded in getting me out of a reading slump. So, what are the reasons why I would recommend it for a (quite young) YA audience?

First, because you have a coming-of-age story with a heroine who is at least sufferable and will, I think, be relatable for young readers. Moreover, this side of the plot is coupled with a decent amount of adventure and romance, so what else can we ask? The world is interesting, with ours being just a layer among the other worlds that exist and being caught in a war between them. I loved the mythological aspect of the story, which is borrowing myths and gods and goddesses from a lot of different mythologies, some well known and others that I liked discovering.

This book is also full of characters, that we meet alongside Meara, and share her awe in front of some of them. We have enough information about them, be it their past or their role in their mythology, to be interested in them and follow them with pleasure. And if you like the found family trope, the one Meara and her sister Bree find to complement their own is one of the funniest I’ve read about.

In brief: even though some parts of the plot felt a bit over the top (some action scenes, betrayals…), I think the humour sprinkled throughout the dialogues and the mythological aspect will appeal to a lot of readers.

My rating: 3.5/5

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