Haven

Haven

by Kristi Cook

For years, Violet has tried to get people to believe her.  She's begged, she's pleaded, and she's even tried to sneakily suggest, but when her father goes on a journalistic assignment to Afghanistan, Violet pulls out all the stops.  Yet he still doesn't listen to her.  And now he's dead.

You see, Violet sees the future.  And the future she usually sees is of violence against her family.  So she got to see the murder of her father as if she was there in the room weeks before he even left her with her stepmother. 

Now, a couple of years later, Violet has the chance to start over.  Her stepmother gets a lucrative job offer in New York and Violet gets the opportunity to go to Winterhaven, an exclusive boarding school that's even more exclusive than she thought.  While she thought she was leaving behind the taunts of "freak" from her schoolmates and getting a chance to be someone completely new, it turns out that the school she goes to is full of "freaks" like her.  

Everyone at Winterhaven has a secret.

Everyone at Winterhaven has a "gift".

And one boy in particular has Violet's eye.

But his secrets are more dangerous than anyone else's.  And while she's drawn to him in ways she cannot explain, she must also watch out for him and for his future.  

Who else is better equipped to see what lies ahead than a precog in love?

Final thoughts:  The writing in this one drew me in quickly and kept me eager to read more.  It wasn't until after I put it down that I got the sense that much of this had been done before.  At least this one did a better job of it than most.  There is a whole Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Twilight aspect that, while not new, at least had some new, creative twists.  Once again, my biggest complaint is that this appears to be the first in a trilogy.  Can we not have a single supernatural romance in ONE book??  Also, the cover is bland compared to the story.  I guess the butterfly is supposed to represent coming out of a cocoon or something, but this cover needs more than a vague metaphor.

Rating: 4/5