Book Review: Scar by Caitlin O'Connor

Scar is the second installment in Caitlin O'Connor's exciting urban fantasy Celestial Talisman series. If you haven't read book one, Finding the Phoenix, you might want to skip this review altogether because of spoilers.

The last time we saw Chantelle, aka Vinny, aka Heaven, she was not in a good place. Vinny had just overheard a conversation between Alistar –her love interest— and Robert, the Keeper of her Order of Wielders, the Circle. And she didn’t like what she heard, at all.

So, by the time I was done reading Finding the Phoenix, the predecessor to Scar, I was itching to find out what author Caitlin O’Connor had in mind next for our protagonist. And I must say that I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Scar doesn’t pick up immediately where Finding the Phoenix left off. When we see Vinny again, she’s following the trail of the evil Handmaidens of the Skaath Diurga, alongside her faithful guardian and friend, Blake. But Vinny has certainly changed from the girl we met coming back to life in the morgue at the beginning of Phoenix.

Our protagonist had already shown some impulsiveness when we first met her in Phoenix, but this time around Vinny is a firebrand (as in the one night stand that she has with some lowly joint's bartender) . . . and that’s not always a good thing.

Still, Vinny isn’t the only character that goes through changes in Scar. O’Connor does a brilliant job of developing her characters further, as we get a glimpse into the minds of important secondary characters, such as the aforementioned Blake and Alistair. We learn a lot more about their past, thus understanding better why they behave like they do. And this is also a brilliant setup to the book's exciting climax in the end.

In contrast to Finding the Phoenix, where we only got a glimpse of the main antagonists through the heroes’ eyes, in Scar we get a much more detailed introduction into the inner workings of the dangerous and treacherous Covenants that serve the supernatural Skaath Diurga.

I could talk about this for hours, as it was one of my favorite parts from the book, but it would be impossible to do so without giving important spoilers away. Suffice it to say that the Skaath Diurga are much more closely related to most of the main characters than O’Connor leads us to believe at first. And some of these revelations are as unexpected as they’re brilliant.

Conclusion:

Scar is a step up from its predecessor, and to me that’s saying something, since I really enjoyed Finding the Phoenix. This book’s ending is exciting, unexpected, and it leaves you wanting more. It may be hard for Caitlin O’Connor to top what she’s done with Scar.

If O'Connor succeeds in this, her Celestial Talisman series could be a memorable one. However, Scar is certainly no standalone book. You'll have to read its predecessor to fully understand this book, and the ending is somewhat of a cliffhanger.