READERS GET SWEPT AWAY IN THE ENGROSSING SECOND INSTALLMENT OF THIS MAGICAL COMING OF AGE YA SERIES

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Questions about love, complicated feelings towards the parental figures you once trusted, and the mystifying process of coming into your own as a young adult are hard enough for most teens. Throw in the adjustment to your own powerful magical abilities and a life or death mission with major consequences for the found family you’ve come to love, and young mage Corbin has a powerful and inspiring character arc in Smoke and Mirrors: The Heartstone by Helene Opocensky [July 13, 2021, Gatekeeper Press].
Where we last left Corbin, he’d found a magical community where he finally felt he belonged and a romantic connection to a beautiful, powerful nymph Lorelai. But Lorelai is the secret daughter of Corbin’s former Mentor, Magus Maxim. Maxim had been using Corbin as a pawn in a dangerous game to possess a powerful crystal called The Heartstone that could devastate the human and magical worlds alike. Maxim’s original mission to protect mages from “nomag” Inquisitors had been twisted and corrupted into a megalomaniacal mission for complete power. Now Corbin and his magical friends must get the Heartstone back for Lorelai, the crystal’s true owner and save everyone and everything they’ve come to treasure.
Fans of magical realism and fantasy like Harry Potter, Six of Crows and A Court of Thorns and Roses will find a new world to get lost in when they discover and devour Smoke and Mirrors: The Heartstone.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helene Opocensky was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States as a child. After college, she worked for an insurance company for ten years but, after filing a sex discrimination lawsuit against them, she was hired by her law firm and encouraged to attend law school. After graduation, she worked for many years in the child support department as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Connecticut. Upon retirement, she published her debut young adult novel, Smoke and Mirrors: The Trueheart.

Connect with Opocensky at HeleneOpocensky.com.