Waiting For Magic by Susan Squires-Review, Guest Post and Giveaway

Waiting For Magic
Children of Merlin #3
by Susan Squires
Genre: adult, paranormal, contemporary, romance
Release Date: October 25, 2013

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date October 25, 2013

Keelan is the middle sister of the large and successful Tremaine family who are descended from Merlin of Camelot. His magic lives in their DNA, but only comes alive when each meets a destined lover who shares the gene. Keelan has watched two of her siblings find true love and magic powers they can use to help the family in their fight for survival against the Clan, whose magic comes from Morgan Le Fay. Just Kee’s luck she’s fallen in love with someone who doesn’t have the Merlin gene. Now she’ll never get magic. She’s afraid to tell her even her best friend, Devin, that she’s about to give up on her destiny. They’ve lived like twins since Devin was adopted by the Tremaines when he was nine. Now their paths are diverging, painfully.

Devin has his own problems. He harbors a secret that is driving him to leave the family for good. He’s never felt he belonged anyway. To repay them for their kindness he vows to acquire one of the three lost Talismans. It can protect the Tremaine family from the Clan, descendants of Morgan Le Fay. And only Kee can keep him from making the ultimate sacrifice.

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REVIEW: WAITING FOR MAGIC is the third full-length novel in Susan Squires’ adult, contemporary Children of Merlin paranormal romance series focusing on the Tremaine family who believe they are the descendants of Merlin. Each descendant will come into their power and magic, when they meet the one person that will unlock their destiny. This is Keelan Tremaine and Devin McDonald-Tremaine’s story.

The storyline premise begins four years after He’s A Magic Man-book 2. The Tremaine family has been pulled into a magical war between the descendants of Merlin and, the descendants of Morgan Le Fay and the Clan. Morgan is on the hunt for the remaining three of four powerful and magical Talismans and the Tremaine family is standing in her way. In this particular instalment, Devin (Dev) Tremaine-the adopted son of Brina and Brian Tremaine will come into his power and the source of his transition is a forbidden love with a woman he has called his sister since he was nine years old.

Keelan (Kee) and Devin have been best buds since the day the Tremaine’s brought him home but Dev’s desire for Kee has been growing in the ensuing years and the wrongness of his desire eats away at his heart and soul. Now that they are both twenty three years old, Dev’s desire and love for Kee feels forbidden and incestuous and both have continued to deny their growing power and love for one another.

Susan Squires pulls the reader into a storyline of forbidden love, heartbreaking abuse and bitter revenge. Morgan Le Fay is a woman who wants nothing more than to bring down the Tremaine family and to ensure their demise, Morgan is willing to destroy anyone and everything that gets in her way including those closely connected to the Tremaines. When the discovery of another Talisman leads the Clan and the Tremaine family to a haunted castle, it will be Devin who sacrifices himself in the search for a powerful weapon in the war against Morgan and her minions. Devin has always felt that he has never belonged and placing himself in the direct line of conflict will pull the family into a heartbreaking situation where one of their own is battered and abused.

WAITING FOR MAGIC is an emotional storyline that will break your heart. It is darker and more dangerous than the previous stories; it is passionate and revealing; and the premise straddles the line between moral values and forbidden love where falling in love with your adopted sibling may be ethically wrong-but falling in love with the person who brings out the magic of both your heart and soul is anything but….

Susan Squires does an amazing job writing about a subject that may be considered taboo but one that has been addressed in a number of storylines in recent years. There is always a fine line between right and wrong but sometimes the line drawn is filled with too many holes and not enough defenses. Dev and Kee’s story is a story about two people made for one another and if the powers that be have declared that ‘she is the one’ than who are we to argue with the powers in control.

Reading Order
1. Do You Believe in Magic  (April 2012)
2. He’s A Magic Man      (September 2012)
3. Your Magic Touch (prequel novella) March 2013
4. Waiting for Magic  (October 2013)

Copy supplied by the author.

Reviewed by Sandy

Setting Your Book in Your Home Town

Everyone says, write what you know, and what do you know better than where you live? But I’ve always set my books in exotic locales. It’s fun to pretend you’re there. Dark Age Anglia, Regency England, Morocco, Nineteenth Century Italy, Caligula’s Rome, the French Revolution. I loved researching all those different places and times, and it was a great excuse for some travel. My husband and I have stood on the only sixteen acres that Alfred the Great controlled during the time of the Danes and looked down into the Coliseum on a hot day when you could practically hear the gladiators shouting.

So why on earth did I choose to set my new series, The Children of Merlin, in the Southern California beach towns near Los Angeles where I live? I wanted this family with Merlin’s magic in their DNA to live in a very real world. So the Tremaine family estate, The Breakers is on a bluff over looking the Pacific and Catalina Island on the Palos Verdes peninsula. I used to keep my horse there and drive that coastal road almost every day.

The first book, Do You Believe in Magic? takes place in Nevada as well as Los Angeles. He’s a Magic Man is set in the Florida Keys, the Caribbean and Chicago along with Tremaine Central. But by the book out now, Waiting for Magic, we’re in the L.A. area exclusively.

However, there’s a trap for a writer setting a book where she lives. Your setting for a novel can only be so real. The book sometimes just demands places that don’t exist. In my books, the Breakers sits on a huge bluff over looking the ocean, cut off from neighbors. If a piece of land like that existed, it would have been subdivided long ago! I used the Magic Castle in Hollywood as inspiration for the mysterious Magnus Pendragon’s estate. But I put it in an isolated canyon in the Hollywood Hills instead of on Franklin Avenue with six lanes of traffic right beyond the lawn. I shamelessly relocated a real landmark, an elevator tower that is the only way to access houses at the top of a ravine too. You can see pictures of some of these locations on my website. Susan’s Website

For those of you who live in the L.A. area, forgive me. And don’t go looking for the Breakers. You can, however, enjoy an evening at the Magic Castle, if you have an invitation. It’s much more entertaining and less menacing than the ominous Pendragon estate. 

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Since beginning her career in 2000 with Danegeld, which won a Golden Heart for best unpublished manuscript from Romance Writers of America, Susan has published seventeen novels and three novellas in collections with Dorchester Publishing and St. Martin’s Press, as well as self-publishing three books and a novella in The Children of Merlin Series. She’s been a finalist in the Rita contest for Best Romance Novel and garnered several Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times BookReviews. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the ten most influential mass-market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows a Best Book of Year. Her work has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today Best Sellers lists. She’s known for breaking the rules of romance writing, and whatever her subject, historical period, or theme, her work always contains some element of the paranormal.

Susan is offering a copy of any book in the series to one lucky reader. US/Canada (paper or ebook):  International (ebook only)

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3. Giveaway is open: US/CANADA choice of paper book or ebook: INTERNATIONAL e-book only

4. Giveaway runs from December 12 to December 16, 2013