– Customer review on 06/12/2011

Secret Ones is a wonderful debut that promises an excellent series to come.

It’s a little hard to pick a genre to place Secret Ones into. Although there is a VERY strong romance element, in a paranormal setting, there is also a theme of mystery throughout that moves it into the urban fantasy genre. But what I can decide on... it’s good.

We have the world building around a whole new race that co-exists with humans, and the world building is done quite well, with slow introduction to the rather complicated hierarchy. However, I do wish there was a glossary, I found it hard to keep track of the different roles, what they did, and who was doing them. It’s a minor gripe, as not truly integral to the story. The mix of the Australian setting with the Irish was incredibly well done. It provided such a definition between the world of the humans and the more isolated world of the gadda, for all that they were hiding ‘in plain sight’ in an Irish town. Ms Murphy played this aspect beautifully, with enough description that even those who’ve never seen the Australian ‘outback’ or an Irish winter could taste the dust or feel the cold wind.

I loved that the romantic element is rather ‘mills and boon’, it’s a sure thing; you know it’s going to happen. Yes, Ms Murphy tries to throw some twists in there, but you just know, from the very moment the characters are introduced who plays the romantic interest.

The real story and plot twists come from political power plays within the ‘gadda’, including attacks on Maggie Shaunessy’s family, stolen artefacts and rather sudden life changes. And this makes for a very interesting plot line that will carry on through the rest of the series, so I think we can expect some very clever twists and turns before the series is over, and I just don’t think this is going to resolve itself easily. Sneaky, very sneaky.

There is a bit of steam, particularly once the love match is confirmed, but the first scene was a fizzler (for Maggie as well as for me), for me it is this line:

“She remained calm as he spoke the world to ensure his sperm did not impregnate her – gadda had not need to practise safe sex otherwise, as infections and viruses were no match for their healing skills”

It’s like a dash of cold water, just a little ‘icky’, and pretty much a wasted paragraph. Yes, I understand that the gadda have amazing healing powers, we get that a little later on when talking with Maggies mother, the doctor, but to say they don’t need to have safe sex? It’s just something that stood out in neon as not fitting in.

My other issues was between Maggie, her mother Siobhan and Maggies grandfather (Siobhan’s father), John. There were several scenes where we’re talking about dad... only to discover that we’re not talking about Maggie’s dad (peter) but Siobhan’s dad, John. It just got a tad confusing and involved a re-reading. Of course, if Ms Murphy had managed to write more of a plodder I probably wouldn’t have been racing through the pages, and wouldn’t have missed the syntax change!

Overall, this is a light, romantic urban fantasy. Our characters are all nicely developed and well written. The heroines are strong and capable, but also secure within themselves. Our heroes are strong men, without being overbearing, although maybe the odd troubled past or dark secret (which we all know make a great hero).

This isn’t your standard dark and gritty urban fantasy. This is very light and romantic, even with the mysterious dark deeds going on in the background there is still a sense of hope and goodness. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

– Customer review on 28/05/2011

Its premise
was definitely promising and I was very enthusiastic to read an Aussie SciFi
fantasy novel, however I was left feeling a little underwhelmed.

Stretching out of the usual paranormal genre, Murphy
introduces us to Maggie Shaunessy who is gadda, a secret race on earth with
hidden powers. They mainly conjugate in the town of Sclossin in Ireland. Maggie
has a big mouth and is always getting herself into trouble. When she upsets the
gadda elders one too many times she is sentenced back to her hometown Winton in Australia for two years with no contact from friends. One last night out on the
town, Maggie winds up in bed with fellow gadda Sean Flaherty who happens to
fall madly in love with her whilst she was left relatively underwhelmed by their encounter. She returns to Australia to work in the University where her grandfather runs a science department and she meets hunky scientist Lucas Valeroso, who has no idea that he is a gadda. Little does she know, Sean is on his way to Australia to pledge his love to Maggie at becomes an obsessional character who does not seem to take no for an answer.

When a creature is sent to attack Maggie’s grandfather,
Lucas soon realises that there aren’t just humans on the planet earth and
begins to wonder about all his own oddities that have never before made sense.
Maggie is recruited to train Lucas to climb the ranks of the gadda whilst they
try to figure out who wants to harm her family members.

Like I said the premise of the story is really quite good
and a little out of the usual for a fantasy SciFi genre which I found
appealing. However, there were many things about the story that I found
frustrating. Firstly, I am always a sucker for a love story and Secret Ones is very much one of these. But I wasn’t really convinced about this couple, the author did a lot of ‘telling’ about their attraction and developing feelings but she didn’t really ‘show’ it. In saying that I was also quite aware of the actual writing style of the author which was distracting as I like to become so engrossed in a story that I don’t notice the writing. I was told there was a connection between the two but I didn’t really feel it.

I also thought it was a bit of a shock when Maggie was promoted in the ranks of the gadda considering all the trouble she has caused along the way. That didn’t really make sense to me.

The role of Holly, a woman from Lucas’s past was a bit odd. When she was first introduced I thought for sure she was going to cause some havoc and of course cause a scene between Lucas and Maggie. I know that is a bit predictable but we all love some tension and conflicts in a relationship. However Holly didn’t really make much of an impact and I think she could have caused more trouble for Lucas to keep up the suspense. Instead, most of the problems that come up in the plot were resolved relatively quickly.

The subtitle of the book is ‘dream of asarlai’ which seemed to be a very subtle undertone of the book and again not much purpose. Asarlai is introduced at the beginning of the book and then once or twice she is mentioned in the middle of the book and again at the end. I guess what is good about her character is the problems she has caused were left unresolved and so I expect this will become more of a focus in the second novel. In this first novel though I wondered whether we really needed to be introduced to Asarlai or whether she could have become more of a main character in the book.

In saying all that, I did enjoy the storyline and the different take on the fantasy genre. Given it is the first in a series and was a starting point for introducing all the background information, I would like to see what is in stall for the Maggie and Lucas in the next novel, Power Unbound.