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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Book Review: Struck (Phoebe Meadows #1) by Amanda Carlson

Struck (Phoebe Meadows #1)
by Amanda Carlson
May 24th 2016
Paperback, 328 pages
When Phoebe Meadows gets struck by a strange light in the stockroom of Macy’s, life as she knows it flies out the window. As if being hit by lightning isn’t bad enough, she’s accosted in the subway by a man with a missing hand, arrives home to find a raven on her kitchen counter, and her neighbor, Ingrid, shows up dressed like a gladiator hell-bent on protecting her.

Before Ingrid can shuttle her to safety, Phoebe is kidnapped and tossed into one of the Nine Worlds where she’s quickly forced to come to terms with what she is: A valkyrie. The only problem is, she has no idea what that means.

After a narrow escape, she finds an unlikely ally in Loki’s son, Fenrir. Together the valkyrie and the wolf must battle their way back to New York City and reach the valkyrie stronghold where Ingrid is waiting for her. But with danger and obstacles at every turn, she might not live long enough to learn the full truth about who and what she really is. 


There is plenty of Norse mythology in Struck, with the author putting her own unique spin on it. Phoebe Meadows is struck by lightning at work! If that wasn’t weird enough, she finds a large raven on her kitchen counter and her neighbor, Ingrid, tells Phoebe she is a Valkyrie, one of Odin’s shield-maidens and the daughter of Leela, a Valkyrie and Odin, leader of the Norse gods. Phoebe had been hidden on Midgard (Earth) and raised by human parents that she had always believed were her real ones. But after Ingrid hands her a knife of Odin, Phoebe is kidnapped and thrown into one of the Nine Worlds. She escapes the first one by Yggdrasil, the tree of life, but ends up in the world of the fire demons and where Fenrir the wolf, demigod, and offspring of Loki, has been imprisoned for hundreds of years. Except Fen (as she calls him) is not a wolf most of the time, but a hunk she finds herself attracted to. Both managed to make a getaway to Midgard.

Even with the action, the story begins ponderous. I felt the real story started when Phoebe escaped back home to earth and the story became less laborious. Fen and Phoebe telling each other they loved one another is too quick to be realistic in my opinion. If you enjoy Norse mythology and urban fantasy, this novel gives it to the reader.

I gave Struck 4 sheep.




Pamela Kinney

About the Author:
I’m a Minnesota girl, born and bred. I started writing stories about teenage girls and their social missteps when I was in high school. I still have the handwritten spiral notebooks to prove it.

I started writing FULL BLOODED. because kickass heroines rock and I love shifters of all kinds. There aren’t enough warm-blooded girls to go around, in my opinion. I fell into Jessica’s story and had such a great time writing it and now I couldn’t imagine writing anything other than urban fantasy and paranormal romance. When you’re creating a story in this fantastic genre, it can contain almost any elements you can dream up. Creatively, for me, there’s nothing better.

Amanda is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, with a BA in both Speech and Hearing Science & Child Development. She went on to get an A.A.S in Sign Language Interpreting and worked as an interpreter until her first child was born. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids.

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