Scorched by Mari Mancusi Series: Scorched #1
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on September 3, 2013
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 352
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Trinity
Don’t leave me here... It starts with a whisper. At first Trinity thinks she’s going crazy. It wouldn’t be a big surprise—her grandpa firmly believes there’s a genuine dragon egg in their dusty little West Texas town. But this voice is real, and it’s begging for her protection. Even if no one else can hear it...Connor
He’s come from a future scorched by dragonfire. His mission: Find the girl. Destroy the egg. Save the world.Caleb
He’s everything his twin brother Connor hates: cocky, undisciplined, and obsessed with saving dragons.Trinity has no idea which brother to believe. All she has to go by is the voice in her head—a dragon that won’t be tamed.
The 411:
Girl loses mother. Girl moves in with her sweet, maybe a little nutty, grandpa. Grandpa buys a dragon egg. All hell breaks loose. Girl meets twin brothers, both trying to convince her to take their side. Things get even crazier.
What We Loved:
From the second we heard about Scorched we were beyond excited! It was at the top of our “Can’t Leave BEA Without It” list and when we finally got a copy we jumped with joy. Telling us that we were going to get not one, but two boys, dragons, a kick-ass heroine, and some adventure had our expectations set pretty high. We were not disappointed.
The characters were flawless. There were so many different personalities- some creepy, some mysterious, some swoony- but whatever they were was written with depth and soul. In fact, some of them were written so well that we found ourselves flipping back and forth on who our favorite was.
Take great characterization, add a fast-paced plot and Mari Mancusi’s awesome writing skills, and you have a recipe for success.
The Boys:
Connor or Caleb? Caleb or Connor? It’s an impossible decision. Two gorgeous twins, both with an inner bad-boy and a weakness for Trinity. Mix that with these words and we can see why she was a little confused:
Connor
His kiss was soft, gentle– a wisp of a butterfly’s wings against her lips. And yet, it left a trail of blazing fire in its wake. And more importantly, a promise.
Caleb
“Come on, Trin,” Caleb cajoled. “It’s just food. It’s not like I looked up your bra size.”
and this…
All right. I’ll try to contact him, But, Trin– if he even looks at you sideways, I promise you now, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later.
**side note** Every time Caleb called Trinity princess, our swoon-o-meter- surged out of control. We have a HUGE weakness for that nickname.
How will she ever decide? We can tell you one thing. We would not want to make that decision.
The Girls:
You guys know that we don’t always love the heroine, especially when they face numerous tough decisions. Typically, they do something that makes us mad, or want to shake some sense into them. That’s not true here. We love Trinity. She’s strong, stubborn, compassionate, and extremely loyal to everyone she loves.
We couldn’t even get upset with her about her confusion between the boys. (And we’ve never said that in the history of forever.) When it comes to the Jackson twins we’re pretty sure that anyone in her situation would have reacted the exact same way.
Book #2 can’t come soon enough. We can’t wait for more Emmy/Trinity time and everything else that’s in store for this kick-ass heroine, her handsome side-kicks, and her scaly friend.
Dream Cast:
We were looking for two gorgeous twin boys. You would think that this would have been a difficult casting. Lucky for you, it wasn’t. Not even a little. Here are the Jackson twins:
Kyle and Lane Carlson as “Caleb and Connor Jackson”
What We Think Will Happen Next:
We’re not even sure where to start. We can’t wait to see more Emmy, more Trinity, and more of Connor and Caleb. The big question is (although story-wise the least of Trinity’s concerns) who will she end up with? Whoever it is, we won’t mind consoling the other and his poor broken heart.
Bottom Line:
Pages full of fantasy, swoon, and adventure. A must-read.
Verdict:
| Rating Report | |
|---|---|
| Cover |  |
| Characters |  |
| Plot | |
| Writing | |
| Swoon | |
| Overall: | 4.5 |
Check out the awesome trailer for the Scorched:
Thank you for having me!!
It was fun—I mean, dragons!—but it was also challenging. For example, avoiding time travel paradoxes. While I’ve done time travel books before, never did I do one where people from the future came to our time and wanted to change their own time line. I started looking at various films and TV shows to see how they did it and turns out most of them didn’t let a simple paradox get in the way of a good story. (Watch the Terminator movies and you can see this for yourself.) With Scorched, I wanted it to make sense if someone thought about it and so my husband and I worked a lot on creating timelines graphs and mapping it all out. He’s a lot stricter than I am about it and kept me honest.
That said, it was still very fun. I would wake up in the morning and be like, “I get to spend the day writing about dragons…and get paid for it!” I mean, what job could possibly be better?
First off, I wanted them to be more animal-like than human like. Though they do have some psychic powers that allow them to communicate with the human they choose to bond with, they don’t think or make decisions like a human would. In fact, a lot of times while I was writing I thought about them as very large dogs. They like to eat, they like to be scratched on the nose, they sometimes snore when they sleep, they aren’t above begging for table scraps. If you treat them right they’ll be loyal to a fault and protect you with their very lives. Mistreat them and they can become violent and very dangerous.
Geek, Gamer, Whovian.
Since I just watched City of Bones a couple days ago, I’m going to say Jace from The Mortal Instruments series. I love how his character is dark and broken and yet finds a way to survive through his sense of humor. People always talk about that series as exciting or magical—but for me it’s the banter between the characters that sets it apart from the rest. Also, Jamie Campbell Bower is extremely swoonworthy!
Usually I start with a vague understanding of my characters and they reveal things about themselves as the book progresses. Then I can go back and add details about them to the earlier parts of the book. For the boys, I actually wrote a bunch of scenes that never made it into Scorched of their previous lives on the Surface Lands. I had to understand more about where they came from and how it shaped who they became as people before I could plop them down into the 21st century. Hopefully I’ll be able to use some of those scenes in the later books or just release them online.
Absolutely! Scorched was sold as a trilogy, so there are at least two more books starring Trinity, Connor and Caleb (and the cast actually gets bigger in the second book). Of course my Blood Coven Vampire series was also once a trilogy and ended up being eight books, so who knows? As long as readers like the books, I’ll keep writing in the world.
Who is my favorite Disney princess! (Being a mom to a two year old, this is something I’ve been pondering a lot!) And the answer is probably Belle because she’s smart, curious, a bookworm, and can see beyond someone’s exterior appearance. I used to always say Sleeping Beauty because I love the medieval backdrop of that movie and, duh, there’s a big awesome fire-breathing dragon! But to be honest, she sleeps through half the film. Not exactly girl-powery. So I’m going to go with Belle.
You’re our kind of gal, Mari! Thanks again for joining us today. Scorched was one of our most anticipated reads and we can’t wait to tell everyone about it!
When can I see this movie 😉