Review: Arise by Tara Hudson

  Title: Arise (Hereafter #2)
  Author: Tara Hudson
  Publisher: Harper Collins
  Publication Date: June 5th 2012
  Source: Edelweiss
  My rating: 4 stars

  Reviewed by: Rachel

 

  

Arise is the follow-up novel to Hereafter. Joshua and Amelia's story captured my heart in the first novel and this story was no exception. I was sucked right back in with Joshua's first wolfish grin!  

We pick up with Joshua and Amelia a few months after their showdown with the evil ghost Eli. With that dilemma out of the way, Amelia and Joshua just have each other to focus on with no worries, right? Wrong. With this huge problem out of the way, (or so we hope) the underlying issues of their problematic relationship come to the fore. How can such a relationship survive when Amelia will always be a ghost and Joshua will graduate high-school, go to college and eventually want to start a family? Joshua has a positive outlook, but Amelia is not buying it. She starts to think that taking herself out of his life, even though it would be heart-breaking, is the best thing for him. Also, more problems are becoming apparent with Amelia now experiencing frightening nightmares and uncontrollable materializations. Every time their kissing starts becoming more intense and less chaste, Amelia is swept away and materializes somewhere else. The nightmares are becoming more frequent and feel incredibly real to Amelia, she doesn't know what to make of them or if they have a deeper meaning to her "life." All these issues are put on the back burner when the Mayhews' take a family trip to visit their grandmother Ruth in New Orleans for Christmas. This will be a big Mayhew family gathering with a large group of Seers staying.  Any ghost would be nervous, as Seers have the ability to exorcise ghosts and send them away from the living world forever. We get to meet some new additional characters that add interest to this evolving story. I personally loved Gabrielle. Not saying anything more about her!

This story felt like an unfolding mystery and I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure things out. Some of the revelations were a little predictable but others took me by surprise.  The pace of the story never felt slow to me. Another positive was Ms. Hudson's vivid scene descriptions. From the French Quarter in New Orleans to the ominous netherworld, they were just enough to make you feel like you were there without bogging the story down and slowing the plot. After reading this I felt a serious need for beignets, they sound delicious!

Even though I'm always a little apprehensive about a ghost-human romance, I thoroughly enjoyed this story!  I was swooning over Joshua's midnight-blue eyes and boyish grin. As if that wasn't enough, Joshua has a heart of gold. He's so protective of Amelia and is always trying to make her feel welcome and part of the living as best he can. He really wants things to work out. There may have been a heart-pumping, knee-melting kissing scene or two but I'm not telling. I loved little fearless and caring Amelia, too. She's willing to brave a broken heart and loneliness to protect Joshua and his family, and so Joshua can go on and lead a normal life. Because of this, Amelia holds Joshua at arm's length for a good part of the story, keeping things from him, which was a bit frustrating for me.

I thought this was a wonderful second book in the Hereafter series. In my opinion, it didn't suffer from the dreaded "second-book syndrome" in which there is no real progression in the story, only filler. I felt there were several discoveries and plot movement. I like where things are headed. Another plus, even though things are not fully resolved, there's NO horrible cliffhanger. There is one change that I'm not happy about at all; hopefully something can be done about it. As a side note, don't you just love this cover? I do and it fits perfectly in with the story. No case of "cover fraud" here. 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper Collins for allowing me to read this story.