Esme’s Gift
By Elizabeth Foster
Genre: MG/YA Fantasy
Publication Date: 2019
Content Warnings: none
Odyssey Publications
My Review:
NOTE: May contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk!
After the wild and overwhelming adventure Esme Silver faced in Esme’s Wish, Esme is in for another adventure, this one much wilder, and much more overwhelming.
After returning home in hopes of convincing her father that Esperance is real and that her mother, Ariane, is still alive, Esme is met with an accusation of being mentally unstable. Unable to stay any longer, Esme returns to Esperance, where she enrolls in the city’s school and faces a whole new set of challenges, all the while searching for a way to wake her mother up.
Foster brought in a whole new set of stakes and plot twists that kept me engaged until the very end. I would honestly even say that Esme’s Gift was better than the last, as Esme faced the same issues every young teen faces in school.
Foster added new and unexplored history to her world as Esme and her friends traveled from portal to portal, looking for specific ingredients for an elixir. The heavy Greek influence adds notes of familiarity, and the dragons will always be my favorite part.
Overall, the plot was well developed, the characters more interesting than the last time, and the dash of political intrigue would make this novel appeal to older readers as well. I would recommend it to anyone who loves Harry Potter, dragons, and Greek mythology.
I Rate It: 4 stars
NOTE: I received a complimentary copy from the publisher through BookSirens for review purposes only. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
About the Book:
In the enchanted world of Aeolia, fifteen-year-old Esme Silver is faced with her hardest task yet. She must master her unruly Gift – the power to observe the past – and uncover the secrets she needs to save her mother, Ariane.
In between attending school in the beguiling canal city of Esperance, Esme and her friends – old and new – travel far and wide across Aeolia, gathering the ingredients for a potent magical elixir.
Their journey takes them to volcanic isles, sunken ruins and snowy eyries, spectacular places fraught with danger, where they must confront their deepest fears and find hope in the darkest of places. Esme’s Gift, the second instalment in the Esme trilogy, is an enthralling fantasy adventure for readers 12 years and over.
(Description taken from Goodreads)
About the Author:
Elizabeth Foster lives in Sydney, where she loves swimming in the ocean, walking, and playing the piano (badly). As a child, she was called Dizzy Lizzy-which she regarded as an insult all her life, until she started writing. Now, daydreaming is a central part of what she does. Reading to her own kids reminded her of how much she missed getting lost in other worlds, and once she started writing stories, she couldn’t stop. Esme’s Wish is her first novel.
For the review of Book One, see here.
Paper, Ink, & Lizard 