Blog Tour: The Devil’s Poetry – Louise Cole

Hello everyone! I am excited to bring my review to you during my stop on the Blog Tour for The Devil’s Poetry by Louise Cole.

Questions are dangerous but answers can be deadly.

Callie’s world will be lost to war – unless she can unlock the magic of an ancient manuscript. She and her friends will be sent to the front line. Many of them won’t come back. When a secret order tells her she can bring peace by reading from a book, it seems an easy solution – too easy. Callie soon finds herself hunted, trapped between desperate allies and diabolical enemies. The Order is every bit as ruthless as the paranormal Cadaveri.

Callie can only trust two people – her best friend and her ex-marine bodyguard. And they are on different sides. She must decide: how far will she go to stop a war?

Dare she read this book? What’s the price – and who pays it?

Commended in the Yeovil Prize 2016, this is an action-packed blend of adventure, fantasy and love story.

My interest was peaked by reading the summary, as yours now might be as well. When I picked this book up I was sucked into a secret world hidden in plain view, struggling to balance good and evil.

Callie, the protagonist, is spending a night out with her friends when everything suddenly changes. She stopped searching for her friends in the chaos and is merely trying to save her own life. Just when she thinks there is no escape, some unknown man grabs her and leads her to safety. He gives her a package and leaves her saying “Don’t read it, just keep it safe.” These words pull the reader in and the plot never slows from there.

Callie, a book lover herself, must have struggled the same way I would. I cannot hold a beautiful book in my hands and be expected not to read at least a little of it, especially when I am told not to read it at all. I find myself needing to quench my curiosity. Callie did exactly that…she searched for information and found herself with an overwhelming urge to read the book, a connection between her and the text. Her life as she knew it is over, with the world on the edge of World War III Callie has to make a decision…and fast.

Louise Cole does a great job world building, using our average world as we know it for a base. This mysterious world of Cadaveri and the Order lurking beneath our noses was well thought out and was enriched with detail as the story progressed. The underlying theme of facing our demons and the importance of friendship is very clear and is applicable to everyday life…making these lessons ones we can all learn from. Callie fights not only physical demons, the Cadaveri, but ones that plague her dreams as well. With the loss of her mother on her mind, she must fight past what she knows and choose her own path. She may not be popular in our sense of the term, but she has two close friends…Amber and Gavin. (It is the quality of the relationship not the quantity! That is how I see it.) Despite how tangled Callie becomes in this new dilemma, her friends are there helping her any way they are able, even telling her to back away.

Each character is presented well with a distinct voice. Being told from multiple points of view with no subtitle designations, distinct voices are key in this tale. At some point in the book I was unsure which side was the right side to be on…the Order of Cadaveri. They each fought for what they thought was right, though one cared less about mass amounts of death. Callie was my favorite character, she was so easy to relate to. She is out spoken and always puts her family and friends above the needs of some mysterious order she has just been introduced to, even if they claim to want to help the greater good. A strong headed character makes for a good story because they tend not to take advice from those around them…bringing nice plot peaks.

I really enjoyed this book. The way Callie was saved by a mysterious man that works for a secret order, reminds by of City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. (p.s. I love those books.) I knew from then I would enjoy this book just as much. How could you not love a book where you are pulled from your seemingly normal life to fight off demons and read to save the world? The book left me on the edge of my seat…the Epilogue forced me to look into the second book On Holy Ground.

About the Author

Louise Cole has spent her life reading and writing. And very occasionally gardening. Sometimes she reads as she gardens. She can be seen walking her dogs around North Yorkshire – she’s the one with a couple of cocker spaniels and a Kindle. She read English at Oxford – read being the operative word – and hasn’t stopped reading since.

In her day-job she is an award-winning journalist, a former business magazine editor and director of a media agency. She writes about business but mainly the business of moving things around: transport, logistics, trucks, ships, and people.

Her fiction includes short stories, young adult thrillers, and other stuff which is still cooking.

Her YA and kids’ fiction is represented by Greenhouse Literary Agency and she is also published on Amazon as one of the Marisa Hayworth triumvirate.