Mercy (The Guardians #1) by Wendy Saunders
Mercy is a small town in Massachusetts that was founded by the survivors of the Salem witch trials. Olivia West’s family is the oldest family in town, but Olivia hasn’t been to Mercy in 20 years. She became a ward of the foster system at a young age. Now she is all grown up and has become a historian and author. Her area of expertise is centered on the witch trials of America and Europe along with the history of witchcraft. When Olivia’s Aunt wills her the family home known as The Stick House, Olivia is forced to return to Mercy. Here she will have to confront her past, one that’s full of murder and mystery. The trauma of her mother’s and grandmother’s murders, along with her father’s subsequent incarceration still haunts her. Olivia only has fragmented memories of what took place back then. She remembers her grandmother dead on the floor in a pool of blood and her father sinking a knife into her mother’s chest, and then visions of an inferno.
Mercy is a town full of dark secrets and Olivia gets pulled further and further into its mysteries. All of those mysteries seem to center around her family. When a new string of murders start happening, Olivia learns that her mother and her grandmother were not the only victims 20 years ago. There were a string of murders that led up to those and all of them stopped after her father went to prison. Now these recent murders are very similar and the police suspect her father or someone working with him. They may even suspect it’s her.
Theodore Beckett is from Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1695. He has been having dreams of Olivia since he was a child but he has no idea who she is. Theodore and his brother Logan are witch finders working with a man named Nathaniel Boothe but Theodore feels that Nathaniel is not to be trusted. When Boothe and Logan bring Bridget and Hester West to be held prisoner in his family’s barn, Theodore is urged to protect them. What Theodore doesn’t realize is how these sisters and his dreams are connected.
With its switching POVs and captivating twists and turns, Mercy is anything but ordinary. This is a promising first book in a five book series and I was hooked. It’s full of mystery, magic, folklore, time travel and romance. I am definitely moving on to book two and after you read this one, so should you!
I want to thank authoramp.com for providing me with a copy of this book for an honest review.
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