Blog Tour Review & Giveaway ~ Here They Lie by D'Ann Burrow

 Welcome to my tour stop for Here They Lie by D'Ann Burrows, the first book in her new The Bloodstone Legacy series! This New Adult, Southern Gothic tale surrounds three families and a secret that refuses to stay buried. Winner of the Young Adult Romance Writer's 2014 award for New Adult Fiction, Here They Lie is a novel you don't want to miss! This is a reviews only tour which runs from October 5th - 10th. You can check out the tour page for all the details and be sure to enter the contest at the end of this post for your chance to win one of four fabulous prizes!!

Rating: 4/5 Stars
Author: D'Ann Burrows
Available Formats: eBook & Paperback
Publisher: Three Owl Press
Publication Date: 10-05-15          Pages: 272 

Reese Everett’s aunt picked a bad time to die. Just weeks after a car accident left Reese’s mother unable to travel, her aunt’s house needs to be emptied and sold, leaving Reese as the only member of the family who can do the job. She typically wouldn’t balk at the opportunity to sift through her aunt’s collection of antiques, but when she arrives in Devil’s Vale, Georgia, she discovers the family house in a state of disrepair she won’t be able to handle alone.

Colton Waters is back in Devil’s Vale – whether he likes it or not. After he loses his acceptance to medical school with no explanation, he’s left with a single job offer…one that will return him to the hometown he’d hoped to escape. When an errand to help his sister ends in a meeting with Reese neither will easily forget, Colton takes a job as her temporary handyman.

The longer Reese stays in town, the more she realizes the condition of her aunt’s house isn’t the only thing she hadn’t expected when she made the trip to Devil’s Vale. Reese isn’t the only gifted member of the family – her aunt Kate has been practicing the family business…the business Reese has been sworn never to discuss.

After a ghostly visitor arrives one night, Reese and Colton learn Kate wasn’t the only one practicing the darker arts. They begin to uncover secrets that refuse to stay buried.

Here They Lie won the Young Adult Romance Writer’s 2014 award for New Adult fiction.

Amazon / Goodreads / B&N

My So-Called Review: 

I am definitely a mood reader and as such I like to not only read books according to my mood but also according to the seasons. For me, this means I love reading fast paced thrillers with twists at every turn in the spring and summer and then I tend to slow it down a bit in fall and winter by reading epic fantasies series and dark Gothic romance and suspense. About a month ago I began my search for scary, paranormal and Gothic inspired books to read in the month of October and quickly came across D’Ann Burrow’s new series, The Bloodstone Legacy. The first book, Here They Lie, is described as a New Adult Southern Gothic and after taking a look at its gorgeous cover I just knew this was the perfect book to kick off my Halloween TBR list! Seriously, this cover just screams Gothic suspense!

Reese Everett must return to her home town, Devil’s Vale, after the recent passing of her aunt Katie. She’s been instructed to prepare her aunt’s house and antique shop to be sold and that her aunt took care of the arrangements in hiring help for Reese, even paying them in advance before she died. Colton Waters has recently returned home to help out his best friend Max after the sudden death of his father when he’s also hired by Aunt Katie to complete the renovation projects needed around her house. As Reese gets closer to town it becomes clear that something doesn’t want her returning there and it goes as far as trying to physically stop her from getting there!

Devil’s Vale has three “founding” families; the Polks, the Waters, and the Graves. Reese is a decedent of the Polks, Colton is a decedent of the Waters, and his best friend Max is a decedent of the Graves. As Reese settles in at her aunt’s home she begins to realize there’s something spooking going on, even more so when she discovers a letter her aunt wrote to her that sounds as if she knew Reese was coming and why. The longer Rees stays in Devil’s Vale the more she discovers about her families’ past, the connection between the founding families, and secret the whole town seems to be hiding.

I really enjoyed Here They Lie, it was the perfect book to get me in the mood for Halloween. It had just enough of that creep factor plus a really fascinating mystery that I wanted to get to the bottom of! I had a little trouble getting into it after reading the opening chapter from Reese’s POV which was really odd for me since initially I was completely sucked in by Reese’s voice and loved her character immediately. Plus there was a really great, totally creepy scene early on that had me itching to turn on all the lights! But after that long opening following Reese and her travels to Devil’s Vale a new chapter started and switched POV to a new character. Normally this would be fine, I love books told from multiple POVs but we weren’t given any indication at the beginning of the chapter that this has happened It was a little hard for me to tell whose POV I was in since it was still the beginning of the story which left me feeling a bit confused if I’m being honest. It only took a few pages for me to figure out what was going on and the farther I read the easier it became to distinguish the different character voices between the chapters and it wasn’t an issue. This was really my only reason for the four star rating as I did really enjoy this book and I’m eagerly awaiting the second installment to see where the story goes and to get ALL the answers to burning questions!!

I would definitely recommend Here They Lie for fans of gothic styled mysteries with a paranormal twist and a little romance thrown in! The story doesn’t go too far into the romance side, it’s kept very light which I loved and really allows the reader to focus on the mystery while also giving us something to look forward to in future installments. And it never crosses the line of becoming too scary so this would also be a great read for older teens and fans of books like Beautiful Creatures. A perfect choice to kick off a month of reading Halloween inspired books :)

A huge thank you to Xpresso Book Tours for putting on a fabulous book tour and for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

About the Author: 

D’Ann Burrow once told her preschool teacher she wanted to be a witch when she grew up. That simple comment signaled the start of a life-long fondness of things that go bump in the night. As she grew older, she could most often be found with her nose buried in a book, and she was especially fond of the Nancy Drew series as well as anything by Christopher Pike or Stephen King. Occasionally she’d take a trip to the world of the classics where The Scarlet Pimpernel and A Little Princess reigned among her favorites. She’s lost count of the times she’s read Little Women.

Today, D’Ann enjoys the world of Supernatural, stories about guys with fangs, and she’s seldom met a disaster film she hasn’t liked. When she grows up, she’d like to work at the Haunted Mansion. Until then, watching Ghost Hunters will have to count as research.

D’Ann writes about secrets people keep. Even the bravest heroine or a guy with a heart of gold has a few skeletons in the closet they’d rather not share with the world. When those secrets get out, things get interesting.

A Texas native, she knows making great guacamole is an art form. As a theater mom, she’ll happily chat about Broadway musicals by the hour. Molly and Lizzie, the family furry ones, are frequent stars of her Instagram account.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

Giveaway:

  (2) Signed Copies of Here They Lie (US ONLY)

& (2) $15 Amazon Gift Cards (INTL)

Contest Ends October 14th, 2015

  Prizing provided by the author, hosts not responsible

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