Title: Silver Knight
Author: Caron Rider
Genre: Young Adult/Urban Fantasy
Series: Silver Series
Publisher: Self Published
Source: Lightning Book Promotions
When seventeen-year-old Diana recognizes an elderly priest in a video on YouTube, she realizes that reincarnation is real and that she’s been alive before! Every night in her dreams, she relives her past learning that it’s kill or be killed. Now a bishop at the Vatican whom she saved in another life calls on her once more. She is needed to help defeat evil within the catacombs of Rome. But when she arrives in Rome, she meets Alexander – the man of her dreams! Through the centuries she has loved him…betrayed him...been killed by him. Will she give him another chance or this time will she strike first?
Let me begin by saying that this book totally surprised me. I was sucked right into the storyline, and I thought I would have a lot of issues with a 17 year old and her friends going to Rome by themselves without their parents ever finding out, but I didn't. It sounds crazy that a youtube video would bring back memories of a past life, but it did and it was believable. I loved how we got bits and pieces of Diana's past life throughout the book, and when she hooks up with others who are like her I love how they all relate to someone well known in history.
Diana was great. I liked how in charge she was even though she wasn't sure what exactly she was getting into. She talks like I do, and while there a lot of exclamation points used with her voice, they fit the character. I can't pinpoint what it was that made me like her right off the bat, but I did. It's just one of those rare things where a character grows on you immediately.
There was a lot of world building going on in this book, and like in most first books a lot of the action didn't happen until the end of the book, and this caused there to be little interaction with Diana and her love interest. However, this was by design and I for whatever reason I didn't realize that this was a Urban Fantasy Young Adult book..I somehow thought it was more Paranormal Romance. I think that if I had the UF mindset going into this book I wouldn't have been surprised by the fact that there wasn't a lot of romance in this book. It's all about Diana figuring out her purpose in life and what the priest in the video is up to. Is he really on the side of good??? I also had a slight problem with the the love interest being older then her. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much in YA books when the hero is 2 or 3 years older then the heroine, but it does. (The exception being if the hero is an immortal or vampire, lol.)
All in all though this was a great start to a new series, and I liked it because it was so different. There aren't too many books out there that are about past lives.
