📕 Title: The Dissonance
✏️ Author: Shaun Hamill
📖 Genre: Fantasy/ Horror
⭐ Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

BOOK BLURB

In the late 90s, a group of teens discover a secret magic system called the Dissonance, in which power is drawn from negative emotions. Under the guidance of Professor Marsh, the teens form a coven and learn to harness the magic, but after tragedy strikes the town the coven disbands. Twenty years later, the coven members return to their hometown to find that something is affecting the Dissonance, a disturbance that threatens the town once again. Despite their years apart, the coven must reunite to prevent an apocalypse.

REVIEW

I had this book sitting on my shelf almost a year before I finally picked it up and I regret that I didn’t give it a chance sooner. There were some horror elements but overall it but it leaned more into the fantasy genre, with fascinating lore, dark magic, and even a bit of an academia vibe. Since I’m more of a fantasy ready this fit my preferences, but if you are more of a horror reader you may not enjoy the fantasy elements.

In some ways this can loosely be compared to Stephen King ‘s “It”, where a group of kids encounter some evil entity and then return to their hometown years later to face it again as adults. But this story is so much more; a story about teens who find a connection in their ability to access the magic of Dissonance, and form a coven under the guidance of the morally gray Professor Marsh.

The story alternates between the past and present timeline, first presenting the grown up coven members before returning to the past, a tactic that successfully got me invested in finding out how these promising young kids ended up so far from what they had hoped. I really liked the coven characters: Erin, Hal, Athena. Hamill writes Erin and Athena well, and I especially loved Athena and her character arc. However, I wasn’t a big fan of Owen and his whole subplot—it was just a little too weird for me!

There are multiple sex scenes but they are fairly brief and not overly detailed or gratuitous. They made sense, provided character development, and furthered the plot.

The first half of the book felt stronger than the second half. The Dissonance magic has quite a lot to it and despite the length of the book it felt like this book barely brushed the surface. I’d be interested in reading more about this magic—whether that is a prequel series, a spin off, a sequel, I’d read it!