ARC Review-- Feast: Harvest of Dreams by Merrie Destefano

Halloween is a bad time to return to the woods . . .

Madeline MacFaddin ("Mad Mac" to fans of her bestselling magical stories) spent blissful childhood summers in Ticonderoga Falls. And this is where she wants to be now that her adult life is falling apart. The dense surrounding forest holds many memories, some joyous, some tantalizingly only half-remembered. And she's always believed there was something living in these wooded hills.

But Maddie doesn't remember the dark parts—and knows nothing of the mountain legend that holds the area's terrified residents captive. She has no recollection of Ash, the strange and magnificent creature who once saved her life as a child, even though it is the destiny of his kind to prey upon humanity. And soon it will be the harvest . . . the time to feast.

Once again Maddie's dreams—and her soul—are in grave danger. But magic runs deep during harvest. Even a spinner of enchanted tales has wondrous powers of her own . . .

I received this E-ARC from NetGalley for review

Merrie Destefano's Feast: Harvest of Dreams was an interesting read. To me it had a sort of fantasy flavor to it with these mythical creatures that I cannot ever remember reading about before. The feast off of our dreams and whatnot in order to survive, but they aren't necessarily good guys either. Except for Ash of course and his followers. Er...that gets complicated though.

The story is told in multiple first person p.o.vs so it was a little hard for me to keep the story straight. It just moved from one perspective to another, I found myself lost a time or two, but I was easily led back on track, so that was good.

Maddie is one of those different kinds of heroines, she's a divorcee mother and a writer, trying to find her inspiration by going out to a cabin in a small community that she visited with her parents as a child.

The pacing was decent, at least in some respects. The length of the book isn't super long, a day or two I think, Halloween lasts the longest since that is the night of the Harvest when chaos will reign unless something is done to stop it. But strange things keep happening in the town.

I find it hard to say much about the book. I have to admit that it was slightly hard for me to focus at times. I couldn't seem to stick with what was happening, yet I always managed to find my way back. I think it was because of the change in narrator. It made things slightly more complex for my frame of mind to process everything happening everywhere. Although the story lines did tend to connect together which helped.

Overall rating is 2.5/5 stars--I wanted to say 3, it's really close to 3, but my mind wandered a bit too much with the narrator changes. But other than that, the storyline was good and the characters were likable.

Releases June 28, 2011