Wildefire by Karsten Knight

Title: Wildefire (Wildefire #1)

Author: Karsten Knight

Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR

Release Date: July 26, 2011

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Ashline Wilde is having a rough sophomore year. She’s struggling to find her place as the only Polynesian girl in school, her boyfriend just cheated on her, and now her runaway sister, Eve, has decided to barge back into her life. When Eve’s violent behavior escalates and she does the unthinkable, Ash transfers to a remote private school nestled in California’s redwoods, hoping to put the tragedy behind her.

But her fresh start at Blackwood Academy doesn’t go as planned. Just as Ash is beginning to enjoy the perks of her new school--being captain of the tennis team, a steamy romance with a hot local park ranger--Ash discovers that a group of gods and goddesses have mysteriously enrolled at Blackwood...and she’s one of them. To make matters worse, Eve has resurfaced to haunt Ash, and she’s got some strange abilities of her own. With a war between the gods looming over campus, Ash must master the new fire smoldering within before she clashes with her sister one more time...

And when warm and cold fronts collide, there’s guaranteed to be a storm.

Wildefire is one of those books that has been getting a lot of hype. Now that I’ve read it, I can see what all the fuss is about. It was an amazing book that had just enough of everything. Humor, action, romance, there was definitely something for everyone and that’s only scratching the surface.

In an attempt to get away from her crazy sister and the damage she left in her wake, Ashline Wilde decided to enroll at Blackwood Academy. A boarding school hidden away in the Californian redwoods seemed as good a place as any to start over. But Ash soon discovers that her decision to transfer to Blackwood may not have been as random as she would have thought, there was something that drew her there. Soon enough, Ashline finds out that she has more in common with some of the other students than she would have expected. Even more unexpected, she learns that they are the reincarnation of gods and goddesses, and that she herself is an ancient Polynesian goddess. Now not only does Ash have to figure out what this all means, she also has to find a way to stop Eve, her crazy older sister, who seems to be hell bent on destroying everything Ash cares about. And to think all Ashline ever wanted was to start over and lay low.

This book was absolutely incredible and Karsten Knight is a fantastic new writer. In Wildefire, he has crafted an extremely interesting and captivating story that completely drew me in. I have to admit that at first it took me a while to get into the book, but once I did I wasn’t able to put it down. And I mean that literally, it kept me up until the early hours of the morning because I just had to know what happened next. And that ending. I sort of saw it coming but even then it took me by surprise. It was an absolutely cruel ending considering I now have to wait a whole year for the sequel.

At first I wasn’t sure what to make of Ashline. But the more I got to know her, the more she grew on me and I liked her. She was definitely was different from a lot of the other YA heroines out there. She was tough in so many different ways and she was never afraid to speak her mind. Most of all I loved how sarcastic she was, and her particularly diverse background only made her more interesting. Eve and Ash were similar in so may ways but unlike Ash, even didn’t really have all that many redeeming qualities. May in her mind she thought she was doing good, but she didn’t really go about doing it in the right way. What truly kept me interested in the book was the relationship dynamic between Eve and Ashline. I mean, things can only end well when two sisters are fighting and one is a volcano goddess and the other a storm goddess.

Wildefire was a truly amazing book that took me on an incredible ride. I had really high expectations before reading the book and they were all met, if not surpassed. To put it simply, Wildefire completely blew me away.