The Covenant Keeper

Telesa - The Covenant Keeper by Lani Wendt Young... what a read!! This book is the first in the trilogy. **inhaling** It has consumed me. The Polynesian backdrop and themes make for really good entertainment; better than that, the story and the characters are endearing. The novel sits perfectly alongside its contemporaries - maybe Harry Potter, Twilight - appealing to a teenage, Young-Adult audience but equally entertaining for the mature reader. This book definitely fills the lack of fictional reading material for Polynesians.

At its core, Telesa is a LOVE STORY. It is a tale of magical love between Leila and Daniel. The story is set in beautiful Samoa but could be any Pacific island really. For non-Polynesian readers as well as our young Polys, there are small history lessons strewn upon its pages. As Polynesian societies become more and more colonized/globalized, we lose our identity. The hope is that we can retain some of what we have to pass on to the next generation. The stories we tell the future generations are important to keep the mana, the power, alive.

The author makes no claim that the cultural protocol is accurate, nor does she make any claim that the magic in the book is real. Chances are, though, that most Polynesians have a story about shamanistic magic that healed someone or caused someone death. And maybe part of the belief in the superstition keeps the magic alive, who knows?

Aside from the magic and back to the LOVE STORY -- Leila and Daniel remind me of the magic of love and the excitement of new love. It reminded me of how crazy I was about my husband when we first met. The magic of our instant attraction still amazes me today. It is easy to identify with the main character - Leila. Her feelings of being an outsider in modern America and finding her way to Samoa and realizing that Samoa felt more like home than anywhere in the world is beautiful.

You will fall truly, madly, deeply in love with Daniel as he is every girl's dream. He's courteous and respectful, kind, and driven by a sense of purpose. He is smart, musical, athletic, dare I say "the-boy-next-door". If you like the bad boy types, Daniel is not for you, which works out fine because the rest of us goody-two-show-lovers will gladly snatch him up. At the end of the book, the author posts pictures of the man she fashioned Daniel after. He DOES NOT DISAPPOINT... very, very easy on the eyes!

Go to Amazon and get Telesa: The Covenant Keeper now (just $3.99 for the Kindle App)! Happy reading!