Title: The Dark World
Author: Cara Lynn Shultz
Series: Dark World #1
Genre: YA Paranormal
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: May 27th 2014
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: ARC received from publisher in exchange for an honest review

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Paige Kelly is used to weird--in fact, she probably corners the market on weird, considering that her best friend, Dottie, has been dead since the 1950s. But when a fire demon attacks Paige in detention, she has to admit that things have gotten out of her league. Luckily, the cute new boy in school, Logan Bradley, is a practiced demon slayer-and he isn't fazed by Paige's propensity to chat with the dead. Suddenly, Paige is smack in the middle of a centuries-old battle between warlocks and demons, learning to fight with a magic sword so that she can defend herself. And if she makes one wrong move, she'll be pulled into the Dark World, an alternate version of our world that's overrun by demons-and she might never make it home.


World building in any YA novel that involves paranormal elements can be hard, and I find good world building to be hard to find. So when I picked up The Dark World I knew that there would have to be a very clear world because of the subject matter. And I am happy to say that Cara Lynn Shultz did an amazing job with her world and it is quite the awesome read :D

The Dark World is about a young girl named Paige who can talk to the dead. This fact is quite interesting for her because it allowed for the people around her to deem her mentally ill. I really liked this aspect of the book because it gave Paige another dimension to her character and it allows for readers to connect with her on a level that I don't would have happened if she was popular and undeterred by those around her. I loved that she was a shut in and loved to read and be by helrself because is who I am, and yet she still felt genuine and funny. She had some great one liners that had me laughing out loud at some points and that just made me love her more. The sarcasm will always make me love a character, and this one had plenty.

I mentioned world building earlier and I loved what Cara did in this book. she does not overload the reader with facts about this world, she lets us gradually get to know it, just like Paige has to. she also did a very smart thing and made this world an alternate dimension, this allows the reader to still be grounded in reality but with the option of another world. I loved this because it was so smart and it allowed us readers to find the familiar in a world that is very unlike our own.

I will warn that there is a love interest in this book, and honest I thought it was adorable and at times I really did enjoy their romance and relationship. But I did find that some of what happened to them was cliche and I found myself rolling my eyes. But still I loved Logan's character be cause he is so different from Paige and everything her world represents. I liked that he had his own secrets that were revealed throughout the book, and I liked how both and Paige and Logan dealt with those secrets and what they meant for both of them.

Overall The Dark World was a great paranormal read, I loved the characters, the world and the direction this series is going. I will say that there was a bit of a cliffhanger ending and you well know I really do not like them, but I will say it made sense for the series, but I still wish we had gotten a bit more resolution. That being said, I will wait anxiously for the next book in this series because it will be a must read for me!