Essence of Re by Bonnie Lamer

I found this book through Book blogs and was pleasantly surprised with my first experience in Egyptian mythology/paranormal. Here’s the description from the author:

Eliana Brennan's life has already been turned upside down by her parents' divorce and a move to a new city for her senior year, but when she finds an ancient vial while on vacation in Egypt the real changes begin. Her body feels more alive than it ever has before and she is becoming stronger and faster and even the elements seem to bend to her will. In the midst of these changes, she meets Josh Klein and she experiences a love that has waited centuries to rise again but will she be able to learn to control her new abilities before she ends up hurting, or even killing, him?

I haven’t had much experience with Egyptian themed books so I was really interested at first in this book because it is very different. I have read the Percy Jackson books and several rewrites of Greek mythology made for YA. I was really excited to find that the story was also intriguing.

I liked Eliana’s character. I found her to be a little timid at times but completely assertive during a crisis. This made for an interesting main character. She is vulnerable and yet strong. She is concerned that she will hurt her loved ones but when the time comes and they are under attack she is frighteningly calm and handles the situation. I think I like this trait in her the most. I also like that Josh is a strong character but isn’t afraid of the fact that Eliana is stronger than him.  It is interesting that these characters don’t follow the typical male protects the female stereotype.

The things I didn’t enjoy was parts of the dialogue. I think I just must be jaded from so much writing for graduate school and the taboo on exclamation points. I don’t necessarily fault the author because I think it is a quirk of mine. I wish that so much of the story wasn’t focused on Eliana and Josh. I would like to have gotten to know some of the other characters a little better. Lastly, some parts of the story were a little slow. The time from when Eliana gets her powers until the main conflict is being built is a little slow.

I hope to see more from Bonnie and maybe a sequel to this book as we continue to see how Eliana is handling her new power. Overall I give the book a 4/5.