The Book of Secrets
by Melissa McShaneSeries: The Last Oracle #1
Setting: Portland Oregon
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Urban
Published on June 19, 2019
Pages: 206
Format: eBook Source: Owned
"Helena Davies just wants a job that will get her out of her parents' basement, but by the end of her first day at Abernathy's Bookstore, she has a dead boss in the basement and the news that she is now a part of an endless magical war. Abernathy's is the world's only living oracle, and Helena is now its custodian. Without any training, she must navigate her new world and find a place for herself within it. But there's still a murderer on the loose-and Helena might be next on his list."
I picked up this series because I’ve loved this author’s Extraordinaries series. I ended up reading all of these books back to back over a few days.
Helena answers an ad for a job at a bookstore. She is hired to do some clerical work but her boss is murdered on her first day. She finds out that the employment contract she signed makes her the inheritor of an oracle that lives in the store. She knows nothing about the magical world but has to start working with the oracle immediately because of an ongoing invasions of creatures from another dimension. Magical people have been fighting them for years.
This series is very well imagined. There are factions within the magical world that fight each other as much as the invaders. Because Helena is an outsider, she blunders through their divisions and infighting because she doesn’t know it exists.
Over the course of the series, she grows in many ways. She makes friends in the magical world and has to balance that with her non-magical family and friends. There is a romantic storyline and suspense and danger.
I really enjoy this author’s world building. You feel firmly in the world where the story takes place no matter what unbelievable event is occurring. I’m glad I found this series when it was complete so I could read the whole story at once!
