Saturday Special: Review of Tide by Daniela Sacerdoti

My thanks to the lovely people at Black & White Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Warning – major spoilers below for book 1 of this trilogy, Dreams by Daniela Sacerdoti.

After her parents' deaths at the hands of the demons they fought against, Sarah Midnight was left reeling again by the revelation towards the end of book 1 that her 'cousin' Harry Midnight was actually Harry's friend Sean Hannay. Unable to trust Sean following his lies, Sarah turns to Nicholas, new on the scene. But Nicholas has dark secrets of his own - has Sarah placed her faith in the wrong person? And will she find out the truth about the Midnight legacy before the demons attack again?

One of the most ambitious paranormal trilogies out there, like the first book, this is told mainly in third-person following Sarah, but switches to first person from the perspective of other characters at times. It works well as Daniela Sacerdoti’s voice for each character – particularly love interests Sean and Nicholas – is very strong.

It’s also got my favourite love triangle in any current YA series. The romantic tension between Sarah herself, Sean – who she hasn’t forgiven for lying to her about his identity – and the tormented Nicholas works really well and actually adds a lot of depth to the novel. Also adding depth is the slow revelations about the history of the Midnights, who are a far cry from a 'standard' heroic fantasy family - indeed, there were times when I thought that they were arguably more to blame for Sarah's problems than the villains were! Sarah's discovery of her family's past The world-building, a strong point of the Dreams, continues to be good, and it benefits from an ending which seems to tie up more than the first book did.

If there is a criticism to be made, I think that it's arguably a little too long - it doesn't feel quite like it's a story that needs 350 plus pages to be told - but that's a fairly minor complaint. Overall, this is well worth reading and I'm certainly looking forward to the conclusion of Sarah's story.