Book Review: A Brush with the Moon by Raquel Lyon

A Brush with the Moon
Author: Raquel Lyon
Series: Foxblood Book 1
Publication: Self-Published (November 28, 2010)

Description: One moment is all it takes to change your life. For Sophie, it happened the day the fox attacked her.

All Sophie ever wanted was a way out. Only a few weeks ago, she was a quiet art student with an overbearing mother and no higher dream than starting university and reuniting with her BFF, but destiny intervenes in the form of a fox bite.

If being attacked by a rabid animal isn't freaky enough, her new town has secrets. People are dying, and Sophie feels she is being watched. Then there's the arrogant and annoyingly sexy Sebastian with his plummy accent and come-to-bed eyes creeping her out. She should stay well away, but then he does live in the spooky manor house, and curiosity is her middle name.

My Thoughts: Sophie is looking forward to getting out of her dead-end town and studying art at a nearby university. She already has plans to live with her best friend Beth who has found a nice apartment above the local undertaker. But a fox bite changes a lot of her plans.

Beth has always had vivid dreams but now her dreams seem to be turning into premonitions. One of the first guys she meets at the university is Sebastian whose eyes have been haunting her dreams for years. Sebastian and his cousin Connor are both attending the university though they are a few years older than Sophie and her friends.

Sebastian introduces her to a whole new world filled with werewolves, vampires, demons and other paranormals. He tells her that she has been chosen by the goddess Tokala to fulfill an epic destiny. Sophie isn't sure what to believe but she is developing strange new powers of her own.

I liked the worldbuilding in this one where their are different worlds each with different varieties of paranormals. It seems that Earth has become something of a battleground where they are all fighting for power. 

I didn't really care for Sophie. I didn't like the way she treated her mother or her best friend. I also couldn't quite buy in to the massive personality change she exhibited in the story. She didn't seem like a very nice person and I wondered why the goddess had chosen her for a great destiny. I also thought that she hooked up with the wrong cousin. Connor showed caring and concern for her while Sebastian went off without a word and just left her behind and confused. He also seemed to be careless of her feelings and seemed to find it easy to dismiss her when he had other things to do. 

This book is the beginning of a trilogy and the trilogy is part of a much larger sequence of stories set in the same fictional universe that only loosely resembles the real world.

Favorite Quote:

Where was the young student with dreams of being an artist? She certainly wasn't visible in the mirror before me. I had secretly undergone a complete metamorphosis into bitch lady of the manor, and I wasn't sure if I was wholly comfortable with that. It felt like a pretty lonely position, and loneliness is scarier than any monster.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.