The Last Awakening by Rachel Firasek - Curse of the Phoenix Book 2

About the book:
For three hundred years, Arabella’s life has been one meaningless death after another. In a cruel twist of fate, Osiris gifts the phoenix her mortality and long-gone voodoo magic with a warning that she must save her next soul within a week without using magic, or she’ll lose her power forever.

Ex-soldier Greyson Meadows desperately wants to be freed from the nightmares and guilt that haunt him. Confronted by a waif of a woman who forces him to face the truth about his past, he runs fast and hard, fighting the need to prove himself worthy despite his perceived failures.

When Ari becomes the target of her own magical blunder, the weak will find strength and the strong will fall. One will have to give up everything so the other can have peace, but will love’s magic withstand the loss?           

My Thoughts:
The thing I like most about this series is that even though the stories are short, they jump right into the action and carry you along right until the very end.  Arabella is a fiesty voodoo priestess, or at least she was.  Something went wrong with a spell one day and she ended up serving as one of Osiris's phoenixes until she learns her lesson.  While serving as a phoenix may sound glamorous, it's actually quite the opposite.  Having to die over and over again in the place of others wears thin quickly.  Then one day Ari saves Greyson and everything changes.  Ari is willing to risk her soul to try and help him fight his inner demons (which are pretty nasty), but she is only given a week to do it.

Now, Greyson is ex-military, and has carried around guilt from his time in the service for years.  When Ari shows up and tries to show him that he has nothing to be guilty about, he runs the opposite way at first, not realizing just how much he needs her.  As Ari tries to help Greyson, she realizes that she needs his help as well, and fast.  Osiris has given her a time frame to save Greyson and it's quickly approaching when she finds out that everything she knew about her past was wrong.  Facing this will push both of them to their emotional limits.

I really liked Ari in the first book of the series, The Last Rising, and was excited to see her starring in her own.  I've become attached to the characters and I really hope to see a third book come out.

3/5