Regen (Penchant for Trouble Series)
By: Cassie Greutman
Published: February 15, 2018
Publisher: Indies United Publishing House, LLC
Themes:Regen has themes of friendship, trust, and the importance of family.
Violence: There is a good bit of “Fantasy” violence, such as sword fighting, intense scenes where fairytale creatures threaten the lives of the protagonist and her friends and family. In my opinion not for small children but older more mature kids and teens should be able to see that this is indeed pretend.
Spiritual content:There is mention that Trish’s Foster family are believers, but other than that mention the over all Christianity tones are subtle. You see biblical principals being exhibited by characters though out.
Language: All the language is very family friendly.
Review:
When we were offered the chance to review Regen I was quite excited. The general story sounded interesting and after having listened to The Changeling’s Daughter I was in the mood for another fantasy story. The story starts out and throws you in the middle of things. Like it goes 0-80 in exactly 2 sentences. And I have to say it worked well. We start our story with Trish waking up having just been shot by her boyfriend. As her memory comes back of the events that happen we learn details like she is in the foster system and she has the ability to heal… Clearly from gunshot wounds. Oh and trees like her, like save her from danger like her.
The author uses Trish’s gradual remembrance to inform you of what is happening in the story. I have to say this is one of my favorite forms of introduction to a story because the format feels natural, organic. The character development of Trish as well as Nina and Dan, the foster parents, was so well done you feel like you have new friends by the end of this book.The world of Faerie while we never go there in the story is made to seem both beautiful as well as brutal through the introduction of characters such as Starren and Clay and Wade(murderous boyfriend).
The story flows well and lends itself to your imagination as you learn about the world of Faerie with Trish. While the character and story development was in point for the most part, the characters of Clay and Dan felt… Thin. He seemed as if he was there to be the one that held the readers views but you did not grow a real attachment to him till near the end. That being said it was set up for him to be in the sequel to this story and I personally hope to see some character growth from clay as well as Dan.Overall we recommend this book if you are into modern day fantasy.
Final rating: we are looking forward to book #2 over here at Geek Devotions. We give Regen book #1 of Penchant for Trouble Series a 4 out of 5.