Heart Change by Robin D. Owens

Book Description: Signet D'Marigold's lonely life is shaken when a prophet reveals she is a catalyst for change. But to accept her new life-and the charge of the noble child Avellana-means embracing a danger that may be fatal for them both. Especially when Signet's attraction to her new bodyguard signals a secret enemy sworn to destroy them.


Warning: Spoilers

Heart Change begins with Signet depressed enough to consider suicide. She’s depressed because all her friends have left her, she has no purpose in life and she doesn’t know what her flair is. Flair, in these books, is her magical specialization. All that changes in the first few pages. Her flair is lets her adjust other peoples’ flair. It is an odd one and a type of flair no one has ever heard of before.


The hero and love interest in this story is, Cratag, the bodyguard. A bodyguard as the love interest isn’t odd. But Heart Change is the first book in this series to have a commoner main character. More, he has a strong body, strong weapons skills, but weak flair and in this world flair is the ultimate arbiter of strength. So he is not the hero I expected but excellent all the same. He is described quite often as a “rock.” If Signet is going to make a habit of getting caught up in other’s passages and flair, a rock to hold on to would be a good thing. As a side note, neither one of them made a heart gift for each other. The hero didn’t because he doesn’t have enough flair to go through even one passage; she didn’t because she barely sensed him in her own passages, probably because he has so little flair.

The most interesting scene had nothing to do with the main romance. Maybe that’s sad. Cratag’s student and a brother of sorts married and the wedding was just chock full of drama. Only her side of the family was there and she had terrible, ugly things to say to him afterward (things that rang in his head and made him decide he was wasn’t good for Signet). It was a really bad (or a really good one in that a good story is bound to come out of it) beginning for a marriage and I hope this will be the next story.

Grade: B-