As I finished this book, I was hit by the immortal words of Camila Cabello in her Havana video. “That’s it? That’s how your story ends?” (BTW, if you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s a whole movie in about 5 minutes, and is hilarious. Abuelita is the best.) But with some googling, found out there is a second book, which is not mentioned anywhere at the end of this one. Anyway!
Cadence is an island off the coast of Scotland (apparently) and is strictly divided between a western half, belonging to the Breccan Clan, and the Tamerlaines of the east. Jack Tamerlaine, son of a single mother and unknown father, has had enough of this place, and makes his way to the mainland to study music, planning never to come back. But after several years, he receives an urgent message from the Heiress to the leadership of the east, and a childhood frenemy of his. She summons him back to Cadence, where she is in desperate need of his assistance. Young girls have gone missing, including his up until now unknown little sister, and it is feared that they are somehow being stolen by the west. Jack’s skill as a bard is needed to summon the elemental spirits that rule over the island, and so he is brought back into the tangle of relationships he thought he had left behind.
Now I was enjoying all this until about the last twenty pages when it seemed as though the writer had seemingly decided to arbitrarily just wrap things up with an out of the blue ambiguous ending. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed as if this was the first book of a series, and sure enough, there is a second volume that was published just a couple of months ago. So I definitely am going to look for that. A heads up would have been nice, though.