Review: Touch of Frost

Touch of Frost
Jennifer Estep
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Release Date: July 26, 2011
Pages: 350

My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy — a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest.

But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos. First, mean girl Jasmine Ashton was murdered in the Library of Antiquities. Then, someone stole the Bowl of Tears, a magical artifact that can be used to bring about the second Chaos War. You know, death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Freaky stuff like this goes on all the time at Mythos, but I'm determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why—especially since I should have been the one who died. . .

Touch of Frost was a surprisingly fun and adventurous novel. I wasn't expecting much out of it when I first started, but I enjoyed both the story and the characters. 

One thing I loved, loved about this book was the atmosphere. There was something very... mystic and creepy about it. Surprisingly, it's been a while since I've read about a boarding school that was more than a boarding school. There are so many of these out there, and I usually tried to avoid the setting because it seems so overdone, but I liked this atmosphere and setting.

I really liked the fact that Gwen was a Gypsy. I know that it's not the kind of gypsy that we normally think of, but it was still fun. And I liked Gwen in general. I thought that at times she was pretty kick-ass. One things that bothered me, though, was how little she though of herself. She was going through a hard time and through the book she belittled herself a lot. I would have liked if she didn't do this as much.

I keep saying how 'fun' this novel is, but don't get me wrong. There's definitely a darker aspect to this book. And that's part of what I liked. 

One thing that did kind of turn me off to this book at times was the cheesey-ness of it. And this may be the part that everyone else liked. But for me, it was just a little too much. But it didn't bother me enough to not like the book.

I think Touch of Frost is a unique tale. I can't wait to see what's in store for Gwen next.