Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things by Martina McAtee

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things by Martina McAtee

Published: August 31st 2015 – Self Published

17 year old Ember Denning has made an art of isolating herself. She prefers the dead. She spends her days skipping school in old cemeteries and her nights hiding from her alcoholic father at the funeral home where she works. When her own father dies, Ember learns her whole life is a lie. Standing in the cemetery that’s been her sanctuary, she’s threatened by the most beautiful boy she’s ever seen and rescued by two people who claim to be her family. They say she’s special, that she has a supernatural gift like them…they just don’t know exactly what it is. 

They take her to a small Florida town, where Ember’s life takes a turn for the weird. She’s living with her reaper cousins, an orphaned werewolf pack, a faery and a human genius. Ember’s powers are growing stronger, morphing into something bigger than anything anybody anticipated. Ember has questions but nobody has answers. Nobody knows what she is. They only know her mysterious magical gift is trying to kill them and that beautiful dangerous boy from the cemetery may be the only thing standing between her and death. 

As Ember’s talents are revealed so are the secrets her father hid and those in power who would seek to destroy her. What’s worse, saving Ember has put her cousins in danger and turned her friend’s lives upside down. Ember must learn to embrace her magic or risk losing the family she’s pieced together.

I basically went into this book with absolutely zero expectations… I hadn’t even really read the blurb before I even opened the book! So, I didn’t even know what I was walking into! I absolutely loved this book and I really enjoyed myself whilst reading this book! It was full of action, along with character development!

The story follows Ember, a seemingly normal girl who has a thing for the dead (which is a little bit creepy, lets be honest here). However, things quickly change and we find out that she is not really all that normal and that’s where all the fun begins! Her story is full of so man twisty turns and gasp moments and I absolutely loved it! I also really liked Ember! She was definitely relatable and I felt extremely sorry for her – and it was growing as we found out more about her and her past! I really loved her character and she is definitely someone I could imagine being friends with in real life!

I liked each and every character in this book. There wasn’t a character that was really surplus to the story because each and every one brought something to the table that changed the story in one way or another. Even characters we meet very briefly at the beginning of the book are intertwined and tied in somehow to the bigger picture and it made for some fantastic plot twists and moments that you really just weren’t expecting.

This book was told from multiple perspectives, which means the book (and the characters) are always in danger of melding together so that they become difficult to distinguish from one another. This was definitely NOT the case with this book and every character had their own personality and quirky traits. I loved the differences between all the characters and I had no issues determining between the characters or trying to figure out which character I was reading if I put the book down in the middle of a chapter.

Let me just talk about Kai and Rhys for two seconds. THEY ARE SO FRICKIN’ ADORABLE AND MY HEART CAN’T EVEN TAKE IT BECAUSE…ADORABLE!! *Ahem* I ship the ship and I will always ship the ship because this ship is life. 🙂

Let’s also talk about Mace and Ember… I like them both, don’t get me wrong, and after the ending, I think its kinda cute. However, I personally don’t ship them. I just don’t feel the spark like I did with Rhys and Kai, which means, I personally think there is more to it and I think something is going to happen… which will make sense to me! I just need to read book two!

The ending was so bittersweet! I didn’t even know what to do with myself! I felt so sorry for everyone but at the same time… I DON’T EVEN KNOW!! Ugh. It was a great ending, ok?

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to grab a copy of book two! (which will hopefully be soon!). I would definitely recommend this book to everyone! I gave this book 5/5 stars.