Review: Spirit (Elemental #3) by Brigid Kemmerer

Spirit

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Series: Elemental

Pages: 301

Publisher: Kensington

Amazon – TBD

Synopsis (Goodreads)

With power comes enemies. Lots of them.

Hunter Garrity just wants to be left alone. He’s learned the hard way that his unusual abilities come at a price. And he can’t seem to afford any allies.

He’s up to his neck in hostiles. His grandfather, spoiling for a fight. The Merrick brothers, who think he ratted them out. Calla, the scheming psycho who wants to use him as bait.

Then there’s Kate Sullivan, the new girl at school. She’s not hostile. She’s bold. Funny. Hot. But she’s got an agenda, too.

With supposedly secret powers rippling to the surface everywhere around him, Hunter knows something ugly is about to go down. But finding out what means he’ll have to find someone he can trust…

Review: 4 ½ out of 5 stars

Spirit is the third book in the Elementals series by Brigid Kemmerer and was provided to me by Kensington books/Netgalley.

Spirit is sixteen year-old Hunter Garrity’s story; in Spark he fell out with the Merrick’s after he was accused of being a traitor and life is really throwing him a curveball – in the initial stages I really felt sorry for him, he was treated terribly by his grand-father, Calla was his biggest headache and causing him a lot of grief and nothing seemed to be going his way.

I liked tattooed, pierced bad-boy Hunter from the very beginning of the series, he’s misunderstood, stand-offish and prefers to keep to himself; in this book I wish he could have relied on his friends more rather than taken on too much himself but it was nice to see him slowly start to trust. Being a Fifth gave him the ability to manipulate all of the elements but being a guide gave him the responsibility to dispose of pure elementals which put him in a difficult place, he needed to work out which side he belonged on which wasn’t always an easy decision.

The love interest in this book is Kate Sullivan who was in town for a purpose, I didn’t trust her whatsoever initially and didn’t know where her loyalties lay, but I came to love her interactions with Hunter and how she questioned what she had been taught about the Elementals her whole life, she was a level-headed, confident and strong character; the text messages and banter between her and Hunter were sweet and believable.

I loved the roles each of the characters played in this book, especially Michael who is an absolute sweetheart! The Merrick brothers and their respective partners are each amazing and the villains are written to perfection, Calla is crazy and Silver was despicable!

The plot was fast-paced, emotionally intense and action packed and Ms. Kemmerer threw in a shockingly brutal twist I never saw coming; it definitely wasn’t expected and left me quite saddened.

Overall, Spirit is a great addition to this wonderful series, Brigid Kemmerer’s writing is gripping and her story-telling keeps me riveted. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Elemental world-building and the parts each of the characters play in the overall story.

Thank-you to Kensington Books for the opportunity to read and review Spirit.

About the author: Brigid Kemmerer was born in Omaha, Nebraska, though her parents quickly moved her all over the United States, from the desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, and several stops in between, eventually settling near Annapolis, Maryland. Brigid started writing in high school, and her first real “novel” was about four vampire brothers causing a ruckus in the suburbs. Those four brothers are the same boys living in the pages of The Elemental Series, so Brigid likes to say she’s had four teenage boys taking up space in her head for the last seventeen years. (Though sometimes that just makes her sound nuts.)

Brigid writes anywhere she can find a place to sit down (and she’s embarrassed to say a great many pages of The Elemental Series were written while sitting on the floor in the basement of a hotel while she was attending a writers’ conference). Most writers enjoy peace and quiet while writing, but Brigid prefers pandemonium. A good thing, considering she has three boys in the house, ranging in age from an infant to a teenager.

While writing STORM, it’s ironic to note that Brigid’s personal life was plagued by water problems: her basement flooded three times, her roof leaked, her kitchen faucet broke, causing the cabinet underneath to be destroyed by water, the wall in her son’s room had to be torn down because water had crept into the wall, and her bedroom wall recently developed a minor leak. Considering SPARK, book 2 in the series, is about the brother who controls fire, Brigid is currently making sure all the smoke detectors in her house have batteries.

Brigid loves hearing from people, and she probably won’t refer to herself in the third person like this if you actually correspond with her. She has a smartphone surgically attached to her person nearby at all times, and email is the best way to reach her. Her email address is brigidmary@gmail.com.

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