Book Review + Tour + Giveaway: Uncovering Cobbogoth

Title: Uncovering Cobbogoth

Author: Hannah L. Clark

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Book Blurb: 

Norah Lukens needs to uncover the truth about the fabled lost city of Cobbogoth. After her archaeologist uncle’s murder, Norah is asked to translate his old research journal for evidence and discovers that his murder was a cover-up for something far more sinister. 

When she turns to neighbor and only friend James Riley for help, she realizes that not only is their bitter-sweet past haunting her every step, but James is keeping dangerous secrets. Can Norah discover what they are before its too late to share her own.

Review:

Can we all please take a moment and appreciate this gorgeous cover? 

(stands in awed silence)

This is one of those books just gets better and better as you read along. Kind of like the snowball effect...the momentum just keeps on building and building and BOOM! You hit the climax and you're like "mind=blown."

(do I even need to explain this GIF?)

If you like plot twists and/or seemingly unconnected pieces of information provided early on in the book that later "click" together, then you've hit the jackpot with Uncovering Cobbogoth! The book was pretty interesting from the beginning, but it wasn't hang-onto-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of suspense. Like I wouldn't feel terrible if I needed to stop reading at any given point (you know I love a book when I tell myself "I'll start my homework after this chapter" and then promptly ignore what I just said.) But by the time I was 70% into the book, I was tearing through the pages.

Okay, just for a good measure....I'm going to repeat myself: There are a LOT of plot twists but they are all totally believable! And when everything comes together at the end of the novel....it was like a light bulb had lit up in my head :-)

(ohhhh---now-I-get-it! moment)

At first, I wasn't too keen on Norah's character. She had just suffered many tragedies and I felt that she spent a lot of her time crying (okay okay! I know her uncle just died--call me cold hearted if you will :-P) But as the plot progresses, Norah learns to find her inner strength--especially in the last chapter.

The plot of the novel is sooo unique! You're dealing with metaphysics and an "elevated" race of beings and all sort of magic/science combos. But the author conveys the ideas to the readers very clearly. Stones (namely, gems) play a huge role in the book. For some reason, I found this aspect of the novel to be very intriguing. Instead of using wands/spells/potions/whatever-stuff-you-normally-associate-with-magic to perform "magic", Cobbogothians (the "elevated" race) used stones.  For example, a bloodstone could help heal a wound, obsidian can help restore breath, another type of stone could make the wearer invisible and so forth.

My only major quip was that in one (rather long) chapter, there was quite a bit of info dumping.  Basically the whole chapter is a conversation between Norah and a Cobbogothian in which Norah learns about the Cobbogothian world and history. It wasn't tedious to read, but it was a lot to take in at once. I would've preferred it if the info had been a bit more dispersed.

Okay, so ending on a happy note! I found many quotable quotes that I adore in Uncovering Cobbogoth. I listed some of my favorites below:

"Like the moon without her planet, I was falling, and there was no one left to anchor me." Can we please just revel in the beauty of the word choice used in this one sentence?

"That night, I saw a piece of myself reflecting back at me--a beautiful piece I'd never known existed but had always longed for. It was the real me--the complete me." I love this sentence as it marks Norah's transition from a naive person to one who knows her place in the world.

"You can't really be courageous without fear, [child], for courage is when you act in spite of fear...and I believe you'll find that you're braver than you know." Such beautiful words! *sobs*

"[If] I've learned anything in my life, it's that the smallest things tend to make the biggest difference where right and wrong are concerned." Wise words....Important life lesson here!

Rating:

About the Author

Hannah L. Clark lives with her husband and their son in the Rocky Mountains. She has always known she would be a storyteller. In 2006 she graduated from Utah Valley University with a bachelor’s degree in English, and immediately began writing Uncovering Cobbogoth. 

Hannah loves running, mythology, laughing, soulful bluegrass music, and growing things. Like her heroine, Norah, she is slightly inclined to believe that trees have souls.

To learn more about Hannah and the Cobbogoth series, visit www.cobbogoth.com.

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