*Review--The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney*

CURSED BY A MAGICAL LEGACY

When she was seven, a horrific fey attack killed Donna Underwood's father and drove her mother mad. Her own nearly fatal injuries were fixed by alchemy--the iron tattoos branding her hands and arms. Now seventeen, Donna feels like a freak, doomed by the magical heritage that destroyed her parents and any chance she had for a normal life. Only her relationship with her best friend, Navin, is keeping her sane.

But when vicious wood elves abduct Navin, Donna is forced to accept her role in the centuries-old war between the human alchemists and these darkest outcasts of Faerie. Assisted by Xan, a gorgeous guy with faery blood running through his veins and secrets of his own, Donna races to save Navin--even if it means betraying everything her parents fought to death to protect.

Karen Mahoney's debut The Iron Witch was an interesting read. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. There was a lot of world-building involved, which normally is good if done right but in the way that I read it, it just took too long to get used to things. We don't get to be in on the know of all the fae facts right away.

It's not until past the halfway mark that Navin is even kidnapped. And it doesn't really take all that long to rescue him and everything. The pacing was just off. It had a rather slow, introduction like start and went on and on. For once Donna and Xan meet they have a connection of some sort and they take their time exploring that. Those moments were sort of nice in the first romance sense, and even helped move the story along. It was more of what Donna does during the other time that takes forever, like explaining to Navin what's going on.

There are still plenty of secrets to be told by the end, not a whole lot was resolved and more problems actually popped up. Which can be both annoying and exciting, normally just because the wait til the next book makes it annoying. Donna ends up with more problems and questions than when the book started. There is something more to the attack that occurred when she was a child that took her father's life and her mother's sanity.

So there was a bit of a cliffhanger at the end. Which cliffhangers are always quite evil, but this rating is on the low side of evil. (The worst cliffhanger that I can recall at the moment was the ending of Jocelynn's Pray for Dawn. Wait for Dusk took too long to release) Overall I give this one 3/5 stars. Just one of those books that are kind of okay all around.

This book was apart of my 2011 Debut Author Challenge. It is book #6/12! Halfway there!