Anchored (The Anchored Series #1) by Bridget E. Baker

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Rape is threatened at one point. 

 

Two worlds, one fate ...

Alora was born with the ability to Lift, a power no other women on Terra possess. If the wrong people find out, there's no telling what will happen. But when she almost kills a man in self-defense, her secret is exposed and she's forced to run for her life.

On Earth, Alora's running from something else: hazy memories of her parents' death and the social worker who wants to separate her from her brother. When she sees the man she almost killed on Terra at work, she's flummoxed. She's never recognized anyone from there before—after all, Terra exists only in her dreams...

When her dreams begin to leach into reality, something incredible awakens in Alora. But she knows better than anyone that everything comes with a cost. As the barrier between worlds crumbles, Alora must decide which is safer, which is more powerful, and which world is worth saving.

 

This is the first book in Bridget Baker's latest series and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's a portal type fantasy set in our world, and a sub genre that I haven't sought out much, but I thought this one was done really well. I immediately liked Alora and her brother, and I loved how Bridget was able to write their characters in a way that enabled me to feel the emotions they were going through as they dealt with the hard situation they were in. There were definite red flags as they made a couple of the decisions that put them in danger. I kept thinking, "No! don't do that!" But I could also sympathize with how badly they wanted to be able to stop running and have a normal life. There were also a couple of twists I didn't see coming. 

In the beginning I was left wondering why they were so sure these dreams Alora was having were real and not just dreams or figments of her imagination, but this is explained later on. I have noticed in more than one of her books, that Bridget will leave me wondering about something for a while, but I get the reason behind it later. Sometimes this works really well, but in this case I think I would have rathered this had been explained sooner. Regardless, I was really glad that things were explained. It helped me understand the characters better.

Overall I thought this was a really good book, and I thought the parallel world was interesting. It had a nice balance of good and bad events. One heartbreaking thing happened, and I'm still really sad about it, but I like that the book didn't leave me feeling hopeless. I did have a bit of an issue with the instalove thing, but there was an explanation for it that made it a bit better. I just really hope we get good relationship development between these characters in future books, despite the instant attraction to each other. I probably don't need to worry about that though, since Bridget has never disappointed me with any of the relationships in her books.

Thanks to Bridget E. Baker for providing me with an ARC of this book.