This book had such a nice ending. There are many questions yet to be revealed and answered in this story but the book didn't leave me feeling cut off with a cliff hanger. That is a nice change. I've gotten to expect the cliffhangers in series books, especially first in series. This one left me really, really wanting to continue reading Allie's story but it also gave me a sense of renewal and fresh start; like a whole new chapter of her story will open with the next book. I really like the sweet and hopeful moment Devon Monk completed it with.

3.5 StarsDevon Monk has given us a world where magic exists, but it's not a pretty world. There are steep prices for using magic of any sort, and as always, there are ways to circumvent the system. Allie's gift allows her to track those that would wish to hide their magical doings. She prefers to go her own way, forgetting the blood she shares with the man who made harnessing magic possible - her father.When the story opens it's Allie's birthday, and she's determined to do something nice for herself. Unfortunately, her plans go awry and she ends up getting called out the Hound when a boy gets deathly sick. When that hounding leads her to believe her father is responsible for this illegal Offload, Allie goes to confront him. Seven years since she's seen him last, and all the old bitterness and disappointment comes back so easily - especially when she finds out her father has hired a man, Zavyion Jones, to trail her. She thought she had all the shocks that would come her way, but she was wrong. It was just beginning.I really enjoyed that the world the Devon Monk created was gritty. The use of magic left a residue that you could smell and feel in the air, the earth, the water. The characters can set Disbursements that allow the magic offload to be handled in a specific way, sometimes through proxies and sometimes through specific effects on themselves. It's a well realized world, filled to the brim with possibilities. I think there's a lot of room for us to see more here.I really enjoyed experiencing this book through Allie. She's a strong, stubborn, honorable person. She likes helping people, using her magic to protect and do good, and has her own set of code that she tries to live by. I also really like that she can at turns be impulsive, rash even, and at others she can be extremely cautious. She doesn't mind paying the price for using her magic, accepts it as the cost of living how she wants to. I find this admirable, but I have a problem with it too. One of her major costs of doing magic is memory loss - hours, days, weeks, months? I'm not sure if I can trust her to be a reliable narrator, to actually move forward into any sort of life, and the one thing measure she's taken to make sure she doesn't forget forever is writing in a notebook. But the notes she writes are inconsistent, vague, and not detailed enough, in my opinion. However, this is a minor complaint.There are some alternating third-person point-of-view scenes in this book too, but they felt unnecessary unless that character comes to be more important in the future.Then there's Zavyion. Allie was very drawn to him from the beginning, even against her own better judgement. He's an intriguing character. I feel like we didn't get to know enough about him as he spent a good portion of the book evading answering any questions. But I do know that his actions spoke fairly loud and I want to know him more.The pacing of the story felt a little slow to me. While I was curious the entire time I was reading, it took me about 90 pages to really get interested in what was going to happen. What I didn't like is that there seemed to be far too much talk, and little action. Allie does some magic and then spends the next 75 pages talking about what she learned, what it could mean, what she should do now. I would have liked some more action. Though I can appreciate that a first book in a series is going to take some time setting everything up.Overall, I enjoyed this intro to Allie Beckstrom's world, though I felt there were some areas that could have drawn me in even more. If you're looking for a gritty world with depth, and a strong heroine, then I'd definitely recommend trying Devon Monk's Magic to the Bone.

I finished 2 books today, quick audio reads and they've both been disappointments for me. Let me say here that both should have been labeled PNR (PareNormal Romance) rather than UF (Urban Fantasy). This book started out for me as maybe a high 3. It is a good idea (again a mage type character with a limited power that will obviously grow). Sadly it devolves quickly into soap opera with "concerns of the heart" trumping story. "Our" relationship with our father, our friends...and of course our on again off again love interest predominate. I got so tired of it.The book starts out in an interesting manner with our protagonist using her "talent" to "hound out" who had foisted off the negative cost of his magic onto a boy. (This "boy is the son of one of our protagonist's friends. She has multiple sons and she calls all of them "boy". Every time that happened I flashed on Steven King's Dark Tower series and the "bumbler" they called boy and it would call itself "'oy" as like a dog it couldn't make a "b"). Our protagonist you see is a "hound". She can recognize a person's "magical signature" and trace or track them. The book's magical system is very much still in the formative stages. What had been the "rules" of magic are being broken so like the book's characters we are left to wonder what can happen and what can't.As I said I liked how it opened till we got into the internal dialogues, emotional angst and of course the hot feelings shooting up our/her leg that have nothing to do with magic. I lost interest before the halfway mark, skipped a couple of pointless but explicit scenes (I assume the point was the romance and it's development). By the time we reached the climax (of the book not the characters) I was bored and ready for the book to end. Only the idea and the interesting opening save this from getting a one.We are left with the requisite "more to come ending" and the "tiny clue" about what's to come. It's just not enough to draw me back in. Too bad really. Another I'll have to try and get Audible to allow me to return.

New (to me) author Devon Monk has imagined a world where magic exists--but extracts a serious price from its users. The more magic you use, the bigger the price in pain, blood, or loss...unless you're rich enough, or ruthless enough, to transfer that price to someone else. Allie knows all about magic's price. At least she would, if she could only remember. After all, her father and his wealthy corporation have their fingers in all the magic 'pies' in the world. And she was all set to follow in those footsteps and join the family business--until she worked herself free of her father's 'Influence magic'. Since then she's made her own life, and spends a lot of it tracking down those who misuse magic and turning them in to the authorities. So when her latest job reveals her father's magic 'signature', she tries not to be surprised. But all of a sudden, weird things start to happen, her father's dead, she's the number one suspect, and there's an incredibly handsome yet strange man who always seems to be around when things go badly. And did I forget to mention the almost dead man and his kitten? A mysterious hunky man, lost memories, magical sex (although maybe not quite enough of it!), murder, a cute kitten, industrial espionage...this story has it all. The action is fast paced, the plot is well spun, and the romance vs. suspense quotient was just right for me. Monk has written a strong, yet emotionally vulnerable heroine with a drive for justice that often works against her best instincts. If I didn't know there was a second book coming, I would have found the author's website and hounded her for one! There's a lot of potential in her world and her characters and I'm hungry for more.I loved the idea of a physical cost to magic and how that could play out in today's world. Devon Monk had me hooked from page three and I just couldn't stop reading 'til the end of this book. Now I'm tapping my toes waiting for "Magic in the Blood" to be released in May 2009 and hoping the story picks up right where this one left off!

Somewhere between 2.5 and 3 stars. A pendulum of a read. Somethings worked for me, others did not. For the first book in a series, Monk crafted a well thought out world of magic and power. The price of magic was physical aliment which made sense. The story had a nice flow & was well written. World building never bogged down the story as a whole which was impressive. It never suffered from First Book Syndrome.My main issue with this book was the lead, Allie. While the character had a lot of potential (history, abilities, etc), her personality was very off putting (at least for me). She was one of those characters who was so sure she had things right, that she wouldn't see the trap until it was too late. Even when the problems around her where rather world threatening, she always found a way to turn things back around to herself. Very self-absorbed. And her sarcasm fell flat mostly because it felt some what forced. Though I really loved some of the side characters primarily Cody and Nola. Both were complete sweethearts especially Cody. I was rooting for him from the start. Overall, this series looks like it has the potential to become great, but because of the lead, I don't think I want to continue.