Cold Burn of Magic by Jennifer Estep Review

Cold Burn of Magic by Jennifer Estep

“Be good Lila. Or be really good at being bad. I’ll leave it up to you which one it is.”   

Cold Burn of Magic is the story of Lila, a thief living in the basement of a Library and how one decision changes her life. Since the death of her mother Lila’s trying to live the best way she can without interfering with the Families in her city. But with the Families ever increasing tension hitting closer to home than expected and one of the biggest Family is planning something dark to end everything. What’s a girl got to do?

Lila a good heroine – she’s strong enough to survive four years on her own, she’s able to earn a living even if she’s taking it a day at a time, she’s good at what she does and she’s a good thinker and makes good decisions. She has a gift/magic ability that is very rare which does follow the stereotypical special heroine trend however it’s not annoying as it’s something she doesn’t flaunt around but uses to survive and I think it might link to her mysterious father. I really liked Lila because she faced/went through a lot of things and yet she never gave up and whenever she was harsh to someone she always apologised. However for someone who’s supposed to be cold hearted she sure does sacrifice herself a lot.

I loved the element of Families/mobs and how they ruled over the city with their own sections. Though the plot was good it did feel as not enough happened though I think that is typical in first books of a series.  Lila is a great bodyguard but her ‘detective’ skills could have been defined better as we don’t really know much about how she finds information out compared to how much she kicks ass. Also the entire mystery on who’s behind all the attacks was predictable.

The characters of the novel were a mixture of good and bad. I think it’s a good idea to show a range of characters of different mixtures like that because not every ‘good’ character is likeable and not every ‘bad’ character is horrible.  I liked most of the characters but mainly Felix and Mo because they were just so different from the moody characters in the book.

When Lila and Devon met it was really weird because Lila was shown to be an unfeeling person and then whoop comes a hot guy and she’s all over him. But as the novel progresses their relationship becomes more than just attraction and they do bond over their scars and past. Their relationship is very subtle at points as it isn’t the main focus also I think the ending fit the book really well.

★★★★☆