The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan (Buried and the Bound book 1)

“As the only hedgewitch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts—an uncommonly magical place—Aziza El-Amin has bargained with wood nymphs, rescued palm-sized fairies from house cats, banished flesh-eating shadows from the local park. But when a dark entity awakens in the forest outside of town, eroding the invisible boundary between the human world and fairyland, run-of-the-mill fae mischief turns into outright aggression, and the danger—to herself and others—becomes too great for her to handle alone.

Leo Merritt is no stranger to magical catastrophes. On his sixteenth birthday, a dormant curse kicked in and ripped away all his memories of his true love. A miserable year has passed since then. He's road-tripped up and down the East Coast looking for a way to get his memories back and hit one dead end after another. He doesn't even know his true love's name, but he feels the absence in his life, and it's haunting. Desperate for answers, he makes a pact with Aziza: he’ll provide much-needed backup on her nightly patrols, and in exchange, she’ll help him break the curse.

But when the creature in the woods sets its sights on them, their survival depends on the aid of a mysterious young necromancer they’re not certain they can trust. But they’ll have to work together to eradicate the new threat and take back their hometown... even if it forces them to uncover deeply buried secrets and make devastating sacrifices.” - taken from Goodreads.

This is the book where fairies are definitely not friendly nor is the woods. Told in three POVs of our three main characters, Aziza, Leo, and Tristan, readers are introduced into the wicked and magical town of Blackthorn, Massachusetts. Aziza is a hedgewitch whose purpose is to protect the town. Tristan is a necromancer who traded ten years of his life to a hag in order to save someone. Leo is looking to break the curse that caused him to forget his true love on his sixteenth birthday. Working together to save not only the town but themselves, plenty of secrets are uncovered but not all are answered.

The story will be continued with a second book.

Visit Rochelle Hassan’s website.

 

Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan

“Last night my whole world came tumbling down. Now I’m running scared.”

As an immortal, Nastasya (her current name) is disgusted with her party-girl existence when her best friend Innocencio cruelly uses magick to break the back of their cabbie. Leaving him paralyzed in the streets of London, Nastasya becomes sickened not only by friend’s behavior but her own lack of action and begins to reexamine her life. Remembering another incident/accident 80 some years prior with Incy, Nastasya decides to take another immortal she met that night up on her offer. She leaves behind her friends and the life she knows to go to West Lowing, Massachusetts and live with River, if her offer is still available.

Arriving in West Lowing, Nastasya is unprepared for what awaits her; River runs a home for wayward immortals. Currently under the guise of an organic farm to the locals, River’s Edge is a rehab of sorts for immortals looking to make a change, as well as a school and working organic farm. River offers Nastasya a week to decide if she wants to stay and save her own life. Trading in her party-girl ways for organic food and a simplistic lifestyle, Nastasya feels out of place, especially when she runs into “the Viking god”, gorgeous and sexy Reyn. Reyn makes it clear early on that Nastasya has no business at River’s Edge and that she should leave. His attitude causes Nastasya to want to prove him wrong but she realizes that Reyn looks vaguely familiar. When her teacher refuses to waste time on someone who is just going to leave soon, Nastasya runs to Boston and into some old immortal friends. She learns that Innocencio is looking for her but gets a promise that no one will disclose her location. 

In thinking of Innocencio, Nastasya comes to the conclusion that Incy was dependent on her. They were always together. She had thought of him as her best friend, but he caused her to go places and do things she necessarily didn’t want to. Maybe he wasn’t good for her. Nastasya soon feels comfortable at River’s Edge. When she learns the history of the immortal power houses at dinner one night, her world comes crashing down when she realizes the truth about her family and her mother’s amulet. After dinner the next night, river takes a group to the woods for a magick circle. She is interested in why Nastasya gets sick when she performs magick. During the circle, Nastasya recalls a memory from over 400 years earlier in which a Viking raider almost raped her and he looked a lot like Reyn. He has claimed not to be that old.

Nastasya begins to put together the pieces of her past. Why was Innocencio always around her? What is the truth not only about her family’s lives but their deaths? Why did she survive? What is the significance of her amulet and the burn on the back of Nastasya’s neck? What is the deal with Reyn? Is he her worse nightmare or the possible love of her life?

Trilogy will continue with Darkness Falls in 2011 and concludes in 2012 with Immortal Light.

Visit Cate Tiernan's website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EMf1Ipg76Q