Trinity Faegen

Free will is a pretty heavy philosophic topic to cover in a YA paranormal romance series, but its here, up front and in your face in Mephisto Covenant. Jax escorts souls to Hell on Earth, in a battle to keep his brother, Eryx, from claiming enough souls to overthrow Lucifer and take over. People choose to give up their souls to Eryx, only to find out he tricked them and his promises have loopholes. Consequences to free will choices will sometimes bite you. Jax has found Sasha, an earth bound human angel, who can get him what he wants most, the opportunity to possibly be accepted into heaven and peace for his tortured soul. But, and this is a big but, Sasha must choose, of her own free will to stay with Jax. Sasha is drawn to Jax and the things he makes her feel, but yet, she knows he’s bad and not good for her. Sasha is like the rest of us, who want to be loved, not used.

The romance in this novel doesn’t follow the normal path for a YA saga; Sasha is trying to find real love and questions her feelings, rather than totally falling head over heels, and pushing away the rest of the world for Jax. It’s also fairly graphic with the horrible things that have happened to Sasha, and the make out scenes with Jax. Other thematic aspects are similar to many novels though, in that the normal people want to be special and the special ones just want to be normal. If the whole series is picked up by the publisher, we can expect six books, one for each brother. Getting through the world building at the beginning of the book is time consuming, until finally, the story takes off. I hope that the rest of the books don’t have to rehash everything and don’t take forever to be published. At least the series doesn’t cliff-hanger and wraps up the story of Jax and Sasha neatly.
… (lisätietoja)

3.5/5
Egalley thanks to Egmont USA

I just had a huge rant in Russian about this book, so I'll try to make this one as short as possible.

First of all, the book was pissing me off to no end until the main heroine grew herself a pair.
Sasha Annenkova is half-Russian, half-American and the amount of absurd details about Russia in this book was driving mad. Please, please, if you write a book without doing a good research, why not ask your fellow Russian to read it and point some obvious mishaps?
I'll spare them too you, because, honestly, what you don't know can't irritate you :)

Secondly, Sasha is my least favorite character. She is a victim. She cries a lot, she goes through unimaginable, unbelievable humiliation and does nothing. What the hell?! What kind of message is that?

Yes, she is Anabo. A true light, a soul that have an automatic ticket to Heaven. She doesn't get angry, enraged, jealous or hateful and she doesn't feel temptations. However, while not feeling is good, not doing something to stop what she is going through is really, really bad.

When Sasha and one of Mephisto's sons - Ajax - fall in love she starts acquiring some of his attributes, which make her strong and furious with Lost souls. She wants to fight injustice, she wants to fight back. Hallelujah!

That was the turning point for me. 3/4 along the way I started cheering for Sasha, and the book redeemed itself.

Now the good points. Trinity Faegen created a very interesting world very much like Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R.Ward but for young adult readers. Kudos to her for this!

Big, bad, leather-clad boys living in a mansion and fighting evil around the world and in their own souls? I'm sold.

Surprisingly, this is quite a dark YA, there is even underage sex, which made me raise my brows, because YA usually shies away from such topic.

So here it is. This is an undeniably interesting story with lots of potential. Despite my huge dislike for Sasha until later in the story I congratulate the author on a memorable debut. I do hope she stays away from Bella stereotype and gives us spitfire instead of a martyr later in the series.… (lisätietoja)

Maybe I should have read the other 2 before I read this one. I felt like I was missing some of the background with Sasha and Jax, and I was out of the circle. I was told it is not necessary to read them in order, but I feel like I am breaking a rule!

But reading them in order probably wouldn’t have changed the way I feel about The Mephisto Mark.

About half way through this, I say half way but it was probably only 10% because it took me forever to get through this book, the name and the cover was changed. Personally, I like the original better on both counts. It was changed from The Mephisto Mark to Only You and I don’t like that very much.

This was a long book for me. It finally picked up somewhere around 40%, but I still felt like it never ended. The story is tedious, but the characters are worth sticking around for.

The mythology in this book is very confusing and very abundant. There are about a dozen things I had to mentally track just to not get left behind. (I have a note on my Kindle that just says “who the hell” and I don’t even know what the fuck I was relating too). So, let me get the following straight:

The only way an Anabo can become a Mephisto is to have sex with one of the brothers (and then something about “Lumina”). How convenient for 6 sexy brothers, eh? And it really is just a selfish act for them. Sex with an Anabo means eternity in Heaven (or something). Because the brothers are the Sexy Sons of Hell, and they don’t necessarily wanna be Hell’s bitches.

It was interesting, once I sort of understood most everything.

There were many times when I found myself smiling at something someone said. They are all very clever and witty. I loved the banter between the brothers. I loved Sasha. I loved Zee most of all! (When he watched UP with Mariah, I was totally swooning).

It’s not the characters that I dislike, I guess it is just the story that drug on and tested my patience.

Mariah’s story broke my heart. The poor girl has been through so much, and all she does it give to others. She is a sweet soul and I just wanted her to be at peace and happy.

In the beginning, Mariah was a strong willed girl who stood up for herself. In the end, she was becoming dependent on Phoenix and would get pissed off and break entire rooms when he “forgot she existed”. Good Lord, honey. Get a grip. I know you’ve been through some shit, but please.

I was about done with Phoneix when he mentioned Jane for the 100th fucking time in the first couple of chapters (Kindle note is just me “Jane omg”). But then his story was explained and I felt bad for the guy. But, that doesn’t get around the fact that he is still ultimately selfish. He is adorable, sexy, and sweet, but selfish. “Selfish always, except when it was convenient not to be.”

I liked the brother’s father, M. He was an interesting character. As was Lucifer. And Lucifer told it like it was. I respect that shit.

Eryx was a creep, but a damn good villain. I wouldn’t mind reading the previous books just to see what other shenanigans he has put the boys through.

The story had just enough action to keep me on my toes. One scene reminded me of playing Black Ops. The romance is sweet and slow, but the tension is immense.

It seems like Zee’s story is next and I completely fell for him. I will definitely have to pick that one up. Just wished I would have liked this one a bit more.… (lisätietoja)

I haven’t read the others in this series, but I was sucked into the book from the 1st sentence. Mephisto brothers are the sons of Mephistopheles who is known in German folklore as a demon or the devil. In this series their father is the gatekeeper of Hell. The only way for the Mephisto brothers to enter Heaven and be redeemed is if they find their one true love, and actually fall in love with her. Trinity is picking off Mephisto brother after brother in each book, writing about how they find their one true love (Anabo). I loved the originality in this book, nearly as much as I loved the characters- From the way she portrayed Lucifer (very, very interesting). He’s not viewed as even a necessary evil – only necessary evil, for the sack of balance and the benefit of free will. Eryx In this story is the real evil, hoping to wrest control of Hell away from Lucifer in order to take that freedom away- but also, there is speck of light also to his character - his sacrifice for his siblings, his loneliness and his feeling to Jordan.

Feagan does a remarkable job exploring the mind of a broken person. It deals with such a hard subject, the mental and sexual abuse of a child, but was handled in a way that didn't demean the lead character, Mariah. She was such a broken soul so it was nice to see that it didn't diminish her strong personality - She has a lot of strength and she's kind, compassionate. Mariah orphaned at six and sent to live with abusive relatives in Bucharest, Mariah learned early in life to box up violent, agonizing memories and put them in permanent mental storage. I liked that she wasn't "fixed" and the horrible things that happened to her weren't glossed over because the things that happened to her made her into the person Phoenix fell for and would've made light of the abuse. Also, mixing this shattered girl with the tormented soul, Phoenix, created a story that will have you so captivated you won't be able to put the book down. It's a beautiful story of how two totally damaged people may be able to heal each other if they can open themselves back up after being emotionally shut down for so long. Both characters are fighting their own demons both figuratively and literally and invoked every emotion possible from heartbreak to anger.



The writing is smart and easy. All the elements of the story came together in a wonderful, heart-tugging way – the flow, pacing, characters, and the paranormal aspect. Feagan dissolves you into a world that you can almost reach out and touch. I didn't even notice that this book was apart of a series The Mephisto Covenant series This book is the third book. I think its safe to assume that the book are stand alone since I've read this book and felt that there was nothing missing. With how this book came out I'll be sure to check out the other books to this series.

In Short - I really recommend this book!… (lisätietoja)