Review: Inspire
Inspire by Cora Carmack
Publication Date: December 15th, 2014
Format/source: eBook, purchased
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Part of a series? Yes! It's the first in the Muse Series.
Buy links: Amazon - Barnes and Noble
To inspire.
As an immortal muse, she doesn’t have any other choice. It’s part of how she was made. Musicians, artists, actors—they use her to advance their art, and she uses them to survive. She moves from one artist to the next, never staying long enough to get attached. But all she wants is a different life— a normal one. She’s spent thousands of years living lie after lie, and now she’s ready for something real.
Sweet, sexy, and steady, Wilder Bell feels more real than anything else in her long existence. And most importantly… he’s not an artist. He doesn’t want her for her ability. But she can’t turn off the way she influences people, not even to save a man she might love. Because in small doses, she can help make something beautiful, but her ability has just as much capacity to destroy as it does to create. The longer she stays, the more obsessed Wilder will become. It’s happened before, and it never turns out well for the mortal.
Her presence may inspire genius.
But it breeds madness, too.
*PSA: This review contains SPOILERS.*
I was a little wary about Inspire just because this is the first one of Cora Carmack's books that isn't a contemporary romance. It turns out that I worried for nothing because I ended up loving it just as much as I love her Rusk series.
Greek mythology is fascinating because there's so much depth to it. You can research mythology for hours and days even and just barely crack the surface of it. I'm not one for extensive research, so I love historical fiction and mythology based novels. It doesn't seem like there are a lot of those in New Adult (but if there are, and I'm just looking in the wrong places, please link me to some you enjoyed!), so I'm so pleased that Cora wrote this book and wrote it so well. Her spin on mythology, the muses especially, was so intriguing and unique.
It might not be physically possible for Cora to write one-dimensional main characters. Kalli and Wilder are brilliantly complex, and there are layers to them I'm looking forward to seeing pulled back as the series progresses. Kalli has been alive for centuries, so she's seen a lot and is pretty wise about the ways of the world. Her years haven't made her immune to feelings though, like you might think. She's fierce, she loves so hard, but at the same time, love is new to her. It's something she and Wilder are still kind of trying to figure out together. And Wilder. Oh, Wilder. If you haven't already read Inspire, let me just warn you that you'll fall for him almost as hard and as quickly as Kalli did. That boy is everything you could ever want. He's sweet, responsible, loves his family and oh so swoony. Bonus points (for me, but not for Kalli), he's a musician. A singer/songwriter/guitarist, so of course I'm in love. DUH.
The only thing that I didn't like as much was that this was more graphic than I thought it would be based on other works from the author, but that's just a me thing. It didn't keep me from enjoying the story though.
The bottom line is, if you're looking for some swooniness or just something different in New Adult fiction, check Inspire out! It's definitely a special book, and I can't wait for the rest of the series to release.
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