Review + Giveaway: Keeper

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Title: Keeper
Author: Ingrid Seymour
Publisher: Createspace
Release Date: May 2014 Displaying cbbtourhost.png
Series?: Morphid Chronicles #1-4
Genre: YA, romance, suspence
Format: e-book
Source: CBB Book Promotions

Find the book: Website | Goodreads | Amazon

For all stops on the tour, please hop on over to the tour schedule.

I received the Omnibus Edition of Keeper, which contains volumes 1-4, which otherwise are each a book on its own. Currently Volume 1 is only 99 cents! The last three volumes are currently free. Please check pricing prior to purchase.

Synopsis

Keeper_eBook_cover For them, free will is a luxury . . .

Greg Papilio both wants and dreads his impending metamorphosis. He’s tired of being an ugly runt–always picked last on the basketball court–when he could be strong and what girls call “drop dead gorgeous.” But as much as he looks forward to the transformation, he also fears the caste it will inevitably assign to him. He doesn’t want a common caste. He wants a powerful one, a cool one.

Samantha Gibson is average. She’s short and a little full around the hips–a terribly cute look for a future chef. She’s two years away from culinary school, from her uncaring parents, and from carving a perfectly Human future. She wants independence, a career and a quiet life of her own.

Except fate couldn’t care less about what Greg and Samantha want and gives them exactly the opposite. Greg’s metamorphosis assigns him a caste that enslaves him, while Samantha’s chance to attend Le Cordon Bleu is taken away. But things are never as interesting as when Ashby–an intriguing blonde with a hidden identity–enters her life with a splash.

Greg’s fate is to be Samantha’s Keeper, to protect her at a time when someone wants her dead. He will stop at nothing to ensure her safety, even if her secret past proves deadly, even if he’s keeping her safe for someone else.

Review

This book is a little more than meets the Goodreads summary.

Greg is a Morphid, a species that looks and operates exactly like humans, rumored to have transcended from a different world. Most in America have gone silent about their existence, hiding in fear from the Morphid royal Regent and High Council. Those not registered are considered rebels with something to hide, and Greg’s family is one of them, anxiously awaiting his metamorphosis to change him. It is a process that takes a scrawny runt of a think like Greg and turns him into the next sexy Calvin Klein model, but the metamorphosis is more than just the looks. It also changes your mind, and for Greg, he inherits a voice – the Keeper side of him – that tells him what to do, where to go, warns him. This leads him to Sam.

Sam is your typical American girl, and she dreams of becoming a famous chef and feeding the homeless delicious food, not the slop she serves up at the soup kitchen she volunteers at. She is the daughter of two lawyers who both work at the Bureau of Doom, except…they’re never around – her or each other! She has a very hateful relationship with her mother, which reminded me of my own teenage years with my mom, and her dad is never around. One day, Sam discovers something about herself that rattles her whole world…on top of her parents’ news. Her whole life they’ve been hiding something from her…

Sam is like Greg’s true north, where his arrow points. His caste is that of a servant – to serve and protect Sam – and it is designated so by fate and marked with a symbol on the back, between the shoulder blades.

In the Morphid world there are Singulars and Companions (or Integrals). Singulars live their whole lives being single, there is no one for them. Companions have an Integral who they are destined to be with, and who they find, very similar to how Stephanie Meyers wrote about the imprinting phenomena in the Twilight series.Companions find their Integral, their mate, and continue the lineage of the Morphids, but that does not guarantee what your child’s caste will be. Even with two Companion parents, one could end up a … Sorcerer, or something else.

Greg locates Sam and she begins tutoring him in math, so that he can attend her school for the coming year and keep vigil. Initially, his phone call changes a decision that Sam, and most girls like her, face in life. After a few study sessions, a catastrophic event happens at a local gas station that changes everything for Sam and Greg, and is the first inkling that darkness is afoot in the Morphid world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! Before Greg ever came into the picture, Ashby, the regent prince, sneaks out of the castle to visit Sam. He tries to warn her about her future without scaring her, but just comes off weird. Everything about Ashby’s journey went off marvelously…except his mother found out.

Eventually the Human and Morphid worlds collide, and Ashby swindles his way into Sam’s school. He’s a man on a mission, rebellious in the highest degree, and ready to piss his mother off. His arrogance is his downfall, though, and winds up getting Sam and Greg into a world and danger they know nothing about.

Throughout the novel, I had mixed emotions about the characters, who we as readers transition through from chapter to chapter. At times I thought Samantha was a pretty cautious girl realizing when she was in an odd and potentially dangerous situation, and at others I thought she was the most naive to be going along with Greg or Ashby (depending on the circumstances) like we admonish kids following candy into cars with strangers. She does, however, have a wonderful narrative voice that is very real, and even in those situations, we as readers get a deeper insight into how the gears are turning in her head. Greg I liked from the beginning, and that didn’t change. He seems a normal kid, and he is bent on protecting Sam and fulfilling his role as her Keeper…but he didn’t plan on falling for her. And that’s where things get tricky, because Same is not Greg’s Integral….Enter Ashby, who when he first appeared to try to warn Sam, was a sweet gentleman of a guy, and when he comes back he is this raging, self-centered, arrogant snob. He fully intends to leave Greg in the dust, despite his caste and his role as Sam’s Keeper, and for a while Greg just lays down and takes it from Ashby, knowing that most likely in a short while it would be inevitable to change the way Sam feels about both guys.

Ashby intends to whisk Sam off to his home, as if his mother will welcome her with open arms. That couldn’t be further from the truth, and Greg knows it. Unfortunately Ashby’s arrogance and seemingly lack of intelligence gets the better of him, and brings about several realizations about the Regent, secret castes, and the Morphid world.

I loved the intrigue and suspense building up to the gang’s travel to the castle, Ashby’s home. I knew eventually Greg and Ashby’s paths would cross, and I had an inkling I knew their connections to one another, and I gathered that Ashby’s mother, the Regent and ruler of the Morphids, was up to something nefarious and in cahoots with one of her councilmen, but I was not prepared for the magnitude of it all – and the worthy reason why Morphids went into hiding years ago.

However, I felt that the novel fell flat at the end. At the 80% mark they were barely starting out to the castle, and I knew things would end and wrap up quickly, thinking the book would be left on a cliffhanger, but I was wrong on both accounts. There was so much that happened in that last 20% of the book, but Greg and Sam’s return left a lot to be desired, with the barest hint that they might be temporarily in the clear, but probably not for long. I mean, who crosses a Regent and gets away with it?

About the Author

Ingrid_3 Ingrid Seymour loves, loves, loves to write. She’s a young and new adult author. She writes in a variety of genres including romance, urban fantasy, paranormal and horror. She loves pizza and sushi, Sunkist and gum. She believes in vampires, witches, but not zombies (uh-uh, never!) She writes to loud music, daydreams constantly and spends too much time in twitter!! Find her there? Ingrid has incredible fun doing what she does, but more than anything she enjoys hearing from her readers. It’s a dream come true.