Review: The Book of Lost Souls

Title: The Book of Lost Souls (An Ivy MacTavish novel, book 1)
Author: Michelle Muto
Rating: 4 TURTLES: A great read, I definitely recommend.
Author’s Blog
*Book provided by author in exchange for an honest review

Description:

When teen witch Ivy MacTavish changes a lizard into her date for a Halloween dance, everything turns to chaos. And when no one is powerful enough to transform him back except Ivy, it sparks the rumor: Like father, like daughter. Ivy has heard it all before - that her father, who left when she was seven - was involved with the darkest of magic.

Making the rumors worse, someone uses an evil spell book to bring back two of history's most nefarious killers. Ivy's got a simple plan to set things right: find the real dark spell caster, steal the book, and reverse the spell. No problem! But she'll have to deal with something more dangerous than murderous spirits that want her and her friends dead: the school's resident bad boy and hotter-than-brimstone demon, Nick Marcelli. Nick's offering Ivy more than his help with recovering the missing book - he's offering her a way to ditch her scaly reputation as a lizard-lover. Demons are about as hard to handle as black magic, and as Ivy soon discovers, it's going to take more than a lot of luck and a little charm if she wants to survive long enough to clear her status as a dark witch, get a warm-blooded boyfriend, and have her former date back to eating meal worms before the week's end.

Review:

The Book of Lost Souls is a humorous exciting Urban Fantasy novel about a young witch who has to reverse a powerful curse that brought two infamous killers back from the grave. There wasn’t a dull moment in the book, and I loved the diverse cast of characters that I met throughout the novel. (Spike the lizard-turned-human and Ivy’s dog, Devlin, in particular).

This book really shows the range of Michelle Muto’s writing. The first book I read of hers, Don’t Fear the Reaper, was a heart-wrenching story about a girl’s journey through the afterlife. Going from that to this cute, funny novel was a complete contrast, and I was very impressed that both of these books were so well written, even though they were so different.
I really liked how this book put new spins onto myths, and that there wasn’t just witches, but in this world there was a whole community of “Kindred” with everything from demons to werewolves. The only thing that took away from this story at all was that at certain points the plot was a bit predictable, but overall I didn’t find it all that distracting.

The Book of Lost Souls is an extremely fun and humorous read. I would recommend it to lovers of fantasy and young adult fiction. This was a great read and I will definitely be continuing on with the series. I can’t wait to see what Michelle Muto will come up with next!