Julie's Review: Pandora's Daughter

Summary: Orphaned at 15 and raised by her Uncle Phillip, the adult Megan Blair is an Atlanta pediatrician who hears terrified voices. Revelation comes when childhood friend Neal Grady, who is now a shadowy government agent, arrives to apprise Megan of her psychic powers. And to warn her: Molino-the relentless villain who killed Megan's mother, believing her touch killed his son-is targeting Megan next. Molino thinks Megan was born to an ancient Sephardic family of psychics, and plans to force her to reveal the location of the Ledger, a book that contains the family's secrets and finances. He then plans to kill her, if Megan, Neal and Neal's sidekick, Jed Hartley, don't find him first. Johansen increases the tension by alternating point of view, but two-dimensional characters, repetitious explanations and stilted dialogue make staying tuned difficult. ~amazon.com/publisher's weekly

Review: Pandora's Daughter definitely isn't Ms. Johansen's best novel to date. It's a little slow and while I found all the characters interesting, I actually found that the sex in the book detracted from the other plots. I'm not saying she didn't write the sex scenes well, I'm just saying you pretty much knew they were coming and who it was going to happen between. Not necessarily bad, but predictable. Megan Blair is a 20 something, bleeding heart doctor who it seems has psychic abilities that she does not know about. Neal Grady is a man who was with her when her mother was murdered and also has psychic abilities and for the past 10 years he's been controlling her mind so that she doesn't hear the voices in her head and remember what happened to her mom. Well conveniently Grady needs Megan for something so he lifts his control on her brain to flood her with said voices. We meet a variety of characters who are good and of course the standard evil, demonic villain who was very one-sided. I like my villains 3 dimensional or at least a bit more complicated than Molino.

I found the premise of the book, psychic abilities, to be interesting and thought they could have done a lot more with it than she did but this is probably an introduction to a series where Grady and Megan will be showcased. I'd probably read another book with them as the protagonists but the plot would need to be tighter. I would enjoy getting to know more about the history of the Devanez family in future books.

Final Take: 3/5