Review--House of Marionne by J. Elle

 

Rich is the blood of the chosen

17 year-old Quell has lived her entire life on the run. She and her mother have fled from city to city, in order to hide the deadly magic that flows through Quell’s veins.

Until someone discovers her dark secret.

To hide from the assassin hunting her, and keep her mother out of harm’s way, Quell reluctantly inducts into a debutante society of magical social elites called the Order that she never knew existed. If she can pass their three rites of membership, mastering their proper form of magic, she’ll be able to secretly bury her forbidden magic forever.

If caught, she will be killed.

But becoming the perfect debutante is a lot harder than Quell imagined, especially when there’s more than tutoring happening with Jordan, her brooding mentor and— assassin in training.

When Quell uncovers the deadly lengths the Order will go to defend its wealth and power, she’s forced to choose: embrace the dark magic she’s been running from her entire life or risk losing everything, and everyone, she’s grown to love.

Still, she fears the most formidable monster she’ll have to face is the one inside.

 

House of Marionne is J. Elle's start to a new fantasy series involving magics and scheming houses. This modern day fantasy will keep you on your toes with twists and turns and so many secrets and possible deceptions. It was an engaging read and I quite enjoyed it!

For all her life Quell and her mother have pretty much been on the run. Quell has a dark magic inside her called toushana and it's not something you want to have and it makes her life very dangerous indeed and is ultimately the reason why she and her mother are always on the move. But when enemies track them down once again and Quell has to separate from her mother, she takes refuge with the grandmother she barely remembers at a prestigious school for teenagers with an affinity for magic. It's Quell's hope that she can possibly learn a new magic that can overpower her toushana and only have the new one be "noticeable."

Quell must keep her toushana ability a secret though as most people who have this ability wind up dead. This becomes increasingly hard to do when Quell is given a mentor of sorts with Jordan. Jordan greeted Quell with an attack when she first came to House Marionne looking for her grandmother. But Jordan's job also is in line with dealing with people with toushana. So there's massive secret keeping going on here.

I was also quite surprised that most of the other students seemed to greet Quell with kindness. With the whole boarding school setting, I was almost expecting there to be cutthroat diehards here who would not take to a newbie coming in late and being the granddaughter of the headmistress to boot. But Quell does makes friends with her roommate Abby and another girl, Shelby, who I do believe was named after Shelby Mahurin as the two came to St. Louis last year while on tour! 

There was a nice mystery going on in the background too as girls from other Houses were going missing and no one knows why. There's still an air of mystery going around Quell's toushana abilities and what it all means in the long run. Shady things were happening towards the end of this one that were just eye-opening for what will be in store for Quell next! The ending was filled with jaw-droppers that's for sure!

There was a budding romance going on between Quell and Jordan. They had that disdain to friends to something more going on between them! I love a good slow buildup between lovers! I wouldn't really say they were in the enemies to lovers category as enemies feels too strong, but they definitely weren't friends either until later on, then things start delving deeper!

The ending as I mentioned was filled with jaw-dropping revelations. Things were happening fast and they were intense! Luckily, the book comes out in a month so I don't have that long to wait! It was an exciting read that's for sure. I did kind of wish we had a little more magical aspect happening here and there. That the students all had abilities was nice, but I guess I was expecting some magical duels or something else to really amp up the magic vibes. But perhaps we'll see more of that in the future books.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read! I really liked the characters and how genuine they were. It always ends up surprising me when I look for deceivers and betrayers in side characters. Lol. Guess I've been reading too many kinds of other books lately! This was a lovely fantasy read and I am looking forward to seeing where this series will go!

Overall Rating 4/5 stars