Darkest Fear by Cate Tiernan - ADVISABLE

Tiernan, Cate  Darkest Fear (Birthright, #1), 359 pgs.  Simon Pulse, 2014.  $17.99  Content: Language: PG-13 (19 swears); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13.   

Vivi has been avoiding her jaguar heritage since she was thirteen, but on her eighteenth birthday she and her parents are attacked while picnicking and her parents are murdered and their hearts taken.  Vivi knows that it has to do with her jaguar heritage, and she soon uncovers a cousin that she has never met in New Orleans.  Vivi goes to find Mateo and finds a whole community of jaguars and begins to immerse herself in the life her parents had always wanted for her.  But her parents’ deaths keep haunting her and Vivi and Mateo think they need to find out the truth.   

This book drew me in from the beginning.  Vivi and her struggle with her parents’ deaths and her heritage makes the reader empathize with her.  The plot moves along quickly and is well developed and I loved the minor characters as much as Vivi.  My biggest issue with this book is that there is no resolve to any of the major plot points.  I get it that it is the first in the series (which the next book doesn’t come out until 2016 and I can’t wait to read it), but this book needed to have more of an ending, moving it from essential to advisable.  The mature content is a make out session that involves the removal of her bra which moves it out of the middle school and into the high school.  

 HS-ADVISABLE.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.