Blog Tour – Burn (and Giveaway)

I’m so excited to bring you my stop on Tundra Books Burn blog tour! Tundra provided me with a copy of Burn and I’m sharing my review of it below. I loved this whole series and I’ve got an exclusive chance for you to win your own set of the books.

Burn is the last in Paula Weston‘s Rephaim  series.  We finally get answers to all of our questions.

**Note: This is book 4 in a series, spoilers for books 1-3 are below. If you haven’t read these yet I’m going to suggest you go back and read my review of Shadows and just trust me that you want to read the rest of the books 🙂 **

Here’s a quick recap of the first three books:

 

In Shadows (Book 1) we meet Gaby. She thinks she’s a normal 19 year old dealing with the grief of losing her twin brother in a car accident that almost killed her too. Then we meet Rafa. And we’re left wondering. Who is Rafa? Who are the Rephaim? And most importantly, who can she trust?

 

 

Haze (Book 2) picks up right where Shadows left off. Gaby can’t quite believe that her brother Jude might not be dead. But she’s willing to look. We learn more about the Rephaim and travel from Pan Beach in Australia, to Dubai, to Iowa. And we’re left with a cliffhanger ending….

 

 

 

Shimmer (Book 3) once again picks up right where Haze left off. Rafa is being held, and hurt, by Gatekeeper demons. And Gaby has to get the bitterly divided Rephaim to work together, or Rafa has no chance at all. Shimmer leaves us with the biggest cliffhanger yet…

 

 

 

Title: Burn
Author: Paula Weston
Release Date: June 2016 (in Canada)
Publisher: Tundra Books
Find it: Amazon | Indigo | Goodreads
My rating: 5/5

Summary:

For a year she believe she was a backpacker chilling out in Pandanus Beach. Working at the library. Getting over the accident that killed her twin brother.

Then Rafa came to find her and Gaby discovered her true identity as Gabe: one of the Rephaim. Over a hundred years old. Half angel, half human, all demon-smiting badass and hopelessly attracted to the infuriating Rafa.

Now she knows who faked her memories, and how—and why it’s all hurtling towards a massive showdown between the forces of heaven and hell.

More importantly, she remembers why she’s spent the last ten years wanting to seriously damage Rafa.

My Thoughts:

Answers!  We finally get answers in the conclusion to the Rephaim series. Woohoo!

We left off with the cliffhanger of Gaby getting her memories back and that’s where Burn picks up.

“Memory after memory rises up like a wave, crashes down, replaced by another.  They just keep coming….I’m unhinged, spinning.”

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have all my memories replaced and then to get them back. And for Gaby it’s even worse. As a 137 year old half-angel she’s got a lot of memories! I won’t tell you what the answers are but here’s what we finally learn:

1. What happened 11 years ago. Why Jude and Rafa split off and became the Outcasts. And why Gaby didn’t go with them
2. What happened 1 year ago when Jude and Gaby lost their memories
3. Mya’s true intentions
4. Who’s really calling the shots at the Sanctuary
5. The Fallen, we learn so much about the Fallen

I loved the conclusion to this.  The action was as intense or more so than the previous books.  It’s literally a battle between heaven and hell and you know that doesn’t come without some serious fight scenes.  The pace doesn’t let up. It’s been 11 days since the beginning of the first book and a lot has happened, and Burn takes place over a day (maybe two).  That doesn’t give our characters a lot of down time to think and reflect.  As always, Gaby turns to running when she needs to think.  I love her character and the combination of strength and vulnerability that we see. She can be snarky and prickly, and then turn around and be caring and understanding. The one thing I was disappointed in was the reason that she didn’t go with Jude when he broke off the form the Outcasts.  I can understand why, and how she felt her hand was forced at the time but I don’t think it was a big enough reason to cause the split that it did between her and Jude. We do get to see her character development as she works through her old memories and what they mean given the life she’s been leading for the last year. Gaby and Rafa finally talk out their issues and we get some awesome swoon worthy moments as a result! And the Gaby/Rafa banter is as great as always.

And as always, Maggie is my favourite! She’s so accepting “I’m okay with whoever you are as long as you’re still my friend.” Would that we could all have friends and good as that.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the ending to this series.  All of the loose ends tied up rather neatly, but it was nice getting such a good sense of closure. Especially, the epilogue afterwards! Paula left the door open to a sequel or other stories set in this same world which makes me hope we haven’t seen the last of them yet. If she wanted to write a Gaby/Rafa novella where we get to see them go on vacation I’d be good with that!

Giveaway

The lovely folks at Tundra Books have an extra copy of the entire series (all 4 books!) that they’re letting me give away to one lucky reader. Enter via the Rafflecopter below. (Limited to Canada/US only…sorry International folks!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 The Blog Tour

You can find the rest of the stops on the blog tour where there will be reviews, interviews with author Paula Weston, and other fun stuff by visiting Tundra Books.