YA Review: Royal Street [Paperback]

I've finished "Royal Street" the 1st book in her Sentinels of New Orleans series by Suzanne Johnson.

Product Description

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.

While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

About the Author

Suzanne Johnson is a magazine editor and feature writer with more than fifty national writing and editing awards. A longtime New Orleans resident, she helped rebuild for two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Product Details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; Original edition (April 10, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0765327791
ISBN-13: 978-0765327796

My Review:

Drusilla Jaco aka DJ is given the assignment of capturing and sending the famous and gorgeous pirate Jean Lafitte back to the Beyond by her boss Gerald St. Simon aka Gerry.  DJ sends him back but not before he threatens her with retribution.  Hurricane Katrina arrives and DJ is ordered to evacuate when she receives word that Gerry is missing.  She hurries back and finds New Orleans is flooded and thinks Gerry is dead but the Elders believe he betrayed them and is in hiding.

She's now the leader of New Orleans and her orders is to send the dead back to the beyond and to plug all the breaches where they are coming from.  She's assigned a new partner Alex Warin an Elders Enforcer and she thinks he's a HOTTIE!  They spend a lot of time together helping each other and running into cases involving voodoo and National Guard killings.  She also meets Alex's cousin Jake Warin another HOTTIE who also helps when needed!

This was a fun and thrilling YA read with great character development, a love triangle with three men after DJ (Alex, Jake and Lafitte) and a scary, cruel and viscous villain.

4/5

Other book in series:

1.  River Road - Nov 13, 2012

Thanks Tor Books for sending me this book to review, greatly appreciated!