ARC Review--Sacrificial Magic by Stacia Kane

When Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss—who also happens to be her drug dealer—to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic, she knows she must rise to the challenge. Adding to the intensity: Chess’s boyfriend, Terrible, doesn’t trust her, and Lex, the son of a rival crime lord, is trying to reignite the sparks between him and Chess.

Plus there’s the little matter of Chess’s real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead—and if Chess doesn’t watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.

As Chess is drawn into a shadowy world of twisted secrets and dark violence, it soon becomes clear that she’s not going to emerge from its depths without making the ultimate sacrifice.

I received this e-ARC from the publisher for review via Netgalley

Satcia Kane's Sacrificial Magic was quite the read. This series is a challenging one for me. I loved Stacia's previous series, the Megan Chase series, this one is totally different. It's one where I can't quite decide if I really like the narrator.

True Chess is probably one of the more flawed narrators, being a drug addict. She has an insanely troubling and disturbing past. Yet, she's still interesting at times. Although, the drug addiction part is still hard to get over for me. And it even becomes more of a problem for Chess in this book, but I can't ever really see her giving up the addiction.

Yet, she still manages to kick some ghost butt! Ghosts are nasty things in this series. They are likely to kill you 99.9% of the time. This time Chess goes back to school--high school--to find the ghost of a young girl who committed suicide years ago, but the mystery behind it all is wayyy deeper than Chess thought.

But that's not her only problem, there's murders going about from the drug war. Once again Chess is weighed with too many responsibilities. Yet she's a tough cookie, she'll be able to manage...somehow!

Like I said, Chess's drug addiction becomes an issue in this book more than ever. It gets between her and Terrible, just as their relationship was starting to take off. Their relationship isn't the truly lovey-dovey kind, yet you can really see the love there between them.

Stacia really creates a colorful world in this dystopian setting. You can really feel the grit of society through her words. And the people with their language are also very vivid. I sometimes struggle with their voices because it's so rich--with slang--yet still I can practically hear the twang.

As I said, I struggle with this series, but I like the author's work. So I keep going at it. One book at a time. The pacing is pretty decent, there are a few slow moments, but they build up to greater ones.

Overall rating 3.5/5 stars

Sacrificial Magic releases March 27, 2012