Ok, so I am giving this one a 4 star simply because it feels like it messed with the flow of the series. It belongs as a prelude or companion book. It follows one of Morgan's ancestors and has very little present-day in it at all. It's also missing its signature BOS entries at the beginning of the chapters.

It wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was very interesting and explains some great history of the main story. However for it to just be randomly thrown into the series like this feels forced and off. Maybe telling the story in bits and pieces as a BOS entry would have been way better and stayed with the flow of the series so far.

On to the plot itself. Following Rose was interesting. She was a little full of herself, but I suppose being both a powerful witch and the daughter of a high priestess would do that. It answers a couple of questions that I had from the primary plot and it was a fun read. Now on to the rest of the series and hopefully no more of this stuff. ( )

This book was really good. I loved reading about how everything started. I can't wait to see how Morgan is going to take everything into account in the next book. ( )

This book was completely different than the previous books. This goes to the past with an explanation as how the dark wave got started. I was a bit disappointed because I was loving the romance and story from the previous books. This reminds me of the Michael Myers movies when they put a witch movie in the middle of the series, although this is relevant. This was still good though I’m just glad it was short. ( )

This is a lame attempt to extend the series, painfully, by another book, into the past, so we get some more olden-times and Gaelic. boring.
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The first 2-3 books in this series are addictive, a fresh "modern-teen" POV in the tired genre of witches/kids with supernatural powers finding themselves (and the wonder of Wicca) among families/communities who "don't get it".

After #3, it goes downhill. There is no psychological development of the main characters (and the secondary characters are quite shallowly described and hard to distinguish throughout the series; even the more promising and believable ones, BFFs Bree & Robbie are essentially dropped from the books by #4) a lot of the narrative suspenseful points are all "tell" and no "show", the conclusions are hurried and tied up nicely--except for a minimum of predictable suspense that the publisher made you have to draw people through the series. Also, each book is so short, (it's like a single chapter of a Harry Potter) that the narrative arc is predictable and hasty, and makes one wonder if these were paid by the book, or that the series was extended way beyond what should have been its natural life span by the publisher, or what.

It's no Harry Potter, that's for sure. Apart from the above flaws, here's no humor (unless you count Morgan's drinking Diet Coke all the time, which gets tired really fast) and no writing good enough to be enjoyed by adults as well (a sure sign of a good children's book).

Also there's way too much touchy-feely Wicca rituals and pseudo Gaelic chanting, which is not well enough written to be convincing and also gets tiresome.
( )

This book is basically the story of one of Morgan's ancestors, Rose, who just happens to be the person who created the Dark Wave. It is set in the 1600's during the time of the witch hunts. Rose falls in love with a young witch who is not of her clan. I don't want to give anything away, but of course things go awry and Rose is accused of witchcraft.

This was a very interesting book. I enjoyed the new characters and the historical setting. It also advances the story because now Morgan and Hunter know how the Dark Wave was created. Now they might be able to destroy it. ( )