Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George

Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George -- Cousins Dacia and Louisa are both excited and nervous about visiting Romania and meeting their mothers' family. There seems to be some sort of family secret, and nobody will explain it to them. When they learn the truth, it will be more shocking than they could have guessed.

This book has a lot of excellent elements, though it falls short of distinction in a few ways. I liked the two main characters, though they were hard to tell apart, at least at the beginning. I also found the love interests... interesting. I wanted to see more development of those stories, because they really took a backseat to the main action of the story. This was probably as it should be, but I think a little more attention could have been paid to that aspect of the book, because it felt a bit rushed. The pacing lagged in places, though I don't know if I would have noticed that if I had not been listening to the audiobook. I also felt that the villains were flat, entirely evil and without nuance. All that said, I did enjoy the book. Many of the secondary characters are well-written and the setting is fairly good. Mostly, I wanted a little bit more from this book, but I liked the things it did accomplish. I'd recommend it to readers who enjoy books like Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing.

(Reviewed from an audiobook received courtesy of the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)