#Cate Tiernan

[con-alas-de-angeles]

He smelled like crisp autumn air tinged with wood smoke, unbearably good.

Cate Tiernan, Immortal Beloved

[quotelr]

There is beauty and darkness in everything. Sorrow in joy, life in death, thorns on the rose.

Cate Tiernan, Awakening

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

JOMP BPC - August 18th - Won't Read Again

as much as I loved the Sweep series by Cate Tiernan, I don't think I could read a 15-volume series again 😅 too intimidating!

[velvetdarkarts]

Cal Blair’s bedroom from Cate Tiernan’s “SWEEP” series. I loved this series so much!

[venusbloo]

2024 July Reading Wrap Up

**All links below are to the books’ respective StoryGraph pages for reference. I do not receive any compensation for clicking these links!! How is it already August? I feel like this year has flown by so far, and while I read a ton in July, I once again did not stick to my planned reading. I did read some of what I planned, but I let a few other books go in favor of deep diving into a young…

[the-final-sentence]

Hunter opened his hand, and in the very center of the crystal I saw myself.

Cate Tiernan, from Awakening

[20smthnreviews]

Immortal Be-loved this series

Ok so after like 8 years I finally got my hands on the last book in the Immortal Beloved series by Cate Tiernan. I read the first two as a teenager, over and over again, so this book series is kinda special to me and it makes me insane that twighlight got the reception it did & noone's ever even heard of Immortal Beloved.

Anyway.

As a normal person does when having just finished the last book in a series that is now a decade old, I went looking for fanfic. AND THERE IS NONE. screaming, crying, throwing up, etc. So I went onto goodreads, bc I had to make sure I wasn't the only person who read and loved this series - thankfully I am not. There's a lot of praise for this series (and well deserved praise at that!) but the ones that caught me off guard were the bad reviews. Most of them were complaining about how they didn't like the main character, or the books are too slow, or the fact that for a grounded fantasy book it has shockingly little in terms of big fight scenes or crazy magic shenanigans... Which just tells me that they missed the point.

This book series isn't really about magic or fights or anything like that. It's about reconciling who you used to be with who you are now, learning to make better choices for yourself and the people around you, learning to forgive yourself and be better, just in and of yourself, among other things. It's about learning who you are, and that there's no expiry date on anything, there's always time to do better.

Does it have magic? Yes. Does it have fights? Yes. A compelling story and frankly a super-hot love interest? Yes. Are these what makes the books good? Well they help, sure, but the heart of the books doesn't come from them.

Quite a few of the positive reviews talk about having a warm & fuzzy feeling after finishing these books and I so relate to that. These are the people who got the points the books make, the importance of slowing down and stopping yourself from just diving head-long into yet another distraction. The books are slow, yes, but they're intentionally that way, and if that's not your cup of tea then so be it - I don't know why you'd critise a book for that though.

My only gripes are that the last book 1) has an entirely different cover art style to the first two? and 2) the ending does feel a little rushed. It would have been lovely to have a couple more chapters to resolve the romance plot line (we get so little of it in the first place T-T) and a few loose ends - as is it does feel a little "and-they-all-got-happy-endings-and-everything's-great-The-End". That being said, no book is perfect and the reasons I love this series WAY outweigh the couple pernickity bits I have... If Tiernan were to write a flash-forward novella though, I'd be a very very happy gal. (We're going to avoid the fact that that is HIGHLY unlikely to happen. The last book came out in 2013.)

TLDR? Read these books, please. I need someone to talk to about them! If not for that, then come for the dry humour, spikey but loveable main character and the sneaking suspicion that the books might be teaching you something...

[mamaptaha]

I have been looking for some things, and found this pice of love.

So I want to add one more thing:

You don't have to read all the books to enjoy the other once.

I found 5 books from the series in a thrift store, so I don't have all of them. In fact I have two gigantic gaps to fill. I started reading from book 5, and it is surprisingly easy to understand and read. All the books can be stand-alone's, if needed, in my opinion.

It is also kinda fun to have a gap between books, cuz you end at one point. And then jump to three month later.

Te-he

The Wicca/Sweep series by Cate Tiernan and why you should read it

OKAY SO.

I’ve just reread the Wicca books by Cate Tiernan (the series is called Sweep in the US). Mostly as something soothing (rereading is always soothing, it’s like reading with your eyes closed. kind of.) and because I’d been eyeing it for a while. And I’ve gotten a big rush of how much I like it, and I wish it had a bigger fandom (what is it with me and tiny fandoms lately, srsly). So here is the breakdown of what it is and why you should check it out. 

The Plot

So I’ve recced this to a few people irl, and unfortunately as we live in a post-twilight literary world, there are a few things I need to make clear straight away. First, though you could legit describe this series as “like twilight but good”, it actually predates Twilight easily. Second, I’m gonna spoil a plot twist because if you don’t know this is going to happen there is no reason to keep reading - or, like, there was when I was a teenager and didn’t make Twilight-ish assumptions about what was going on, but I can very easily see people junking the books without getting past this first bit. So here we go:

Meet Morgan! Morgan is our protagonist. She’s a tad stereotypical - she’s not traditionally pretty, kind of awkward, sixteen years old, and a maths nerd. Her family is catholic, and so is she, though she doesn’t seem particularly intense about it. Her best friend is Bree, and Bree is one of those automatically stunning girls. Morgan is cool with this, everything is fine. Except this year at school, there is a Hot New Mysterious Boy called Cal. Morgan gets a super crush on him, but assumes there is No Hope.

Cal organises a party, and it turns out he’s a witch. They do a circle, and Morgan basically feels like the whole world just opened up inside her brain. To cut a long story short, it turns out she’s actually got a super-awesome magical inheritance. Also, Cal kisses her and they start dating.

At this point, if you’re reading her and Cal with an eye on the relationship dynamics, it doesn’t look great. Cal never reaches Cullenish levels of unsettling behaviour (at least, not while they’re actually still dating), but there are a few red flags, particularly as Morgan becomes more isolated from her family and friends. But Morgan thinks everything is very romantic. Cal is her rock. And what did she do to deserve this? She is very lucky. Uh huh. Some of you are probably shaking your heads now, and thinking H, why are you telling me I should read fifteen books of this relationship?

But NO, dear reader. Because in BOOK THREE, Cal tries to kill Morgan (that escalated quickly) and then becomes, basically, a villain for the rest of the series. Because it turns out all those red flags were written in as red flags and not as “romance”. And then we get Morgan dealing with this and steadily becoming a stronger person and it is AWESOME.

Flaws

Okay, it’s not the most perfect book series in the world. It gets kind of purple-prosey in places, and there are definitely places where I noticed that virtually every chapter ends with either a ^gasp^ cliffhanger or with “omg magic love hearts hearts my soul”. So there’s that. To be honest, to me it mostly reads fairly realistically - ie, “I am sixteen and I genuinely feel this intensely about this” - but I would totally get that as a stylistic thing that’s gonna put some people off. Also, it has the “Friends” problem - I enjoy all the relationship stuff, that’s done really well, but the logistics of how the fuck half of these people are actually paying rent (and international airfare) are kind of out the window. 

GOOD STUFF

SO MANY THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THESE BOOKS. I’m gonna make a list. 

1. MORGAN. Morgan’s a great protagonist. She starts out a bit snippy, a little too keen to compare herself to other girls, and kind of insecure. Across the series she slowly develops her confidence - and although one of the last scenes involves her getting kind of dressed up, it’s not ever really made out to be about her appearance. It’s all about how she feels about herself. And she’s a great balance between scared-as-shit by everything that’s going on and confident enough to put her foot down when she needs to.

2. Hunter Niall. So Hunter is (spoiler) Morgan’s second and more-permanent boyfriend. Hunter’s great. The series is set in America, and Hunter is British, somewhat ambiguously (which I find mildly hilarious lol). My favourite thing about Hunter is probably that Morgan, externally, takes a while to warm up to him - he’s a bit reserved, a bit intense, and she’s not quite sure what he thinks about her to start with, but you get a lot of gush from Morgan about how she feels about him. And then, suddenly, in book ten, you get Hunter’s Po. And you are hit in the face with a page and a half of “so that’s morgan. she’s my girlfriend. she’s so great. she’s so badass. oh god I made my hair stick up funny. oh god. she’s smilling look at that smile isn’t she incredible wow. okay okay I’ve got this. I’m cool. hey morgan. hi. I love you. omg she’s so amazing” because Hunter is a GINORMOUS DORK and he just loves her SO MUCH. And idk, I found that really refreshing to read as a teen? Which brings me on to:

3. Morgan and Hunter’s relationship. They screw up a lot, they upset each other, but they always talk it out and figure it out. And I’m so convinced by their relationship? Like, because it’s such a slow burn, it feels more realistic to me. There’s no “our eyes met and BAM” even though this universe does include the concept of soulmates. They’re both absolutely smitten with each other, and it’s not subtle, and they have to do quite a lot of negotiation to get their dynamic the way they’re both happy with it, and idk you folks it just makes me so happy. Because it feels real, purple-prose and all.

4. Alisa! Alisa is one of the only other characters who gets narration. She’s a younger girl who finds out something about her own family, and she gets a whole book to herself (and splits one other book half and half with Morgan). She has a very similar story to Morgan’s in some ways, but she’s still great to read, and I really enjoy her books when I get to them. She’s also half-Latina, I think. 

5. CONSENT IS A THING IN THIS UNIVERSE. LIKE, PEOPLE TALK ABOUT IT AND IT’S A THING THAT IS DISCUSSED AND THAT IT CAN GET MESSY WHEN PEOPLE ARE CONFUSED AND FEEL PRESSURED AND PRESSURE IS BAD and also if you’re morgan’s little sister and someone is pressuring you to have sex she will literally hit them with a baseball bat so there’s that too

6. LGBT rep - it’s not central, there aren’t main characters who are LGBT. But Morgan has an aunt who has a girlfriend, and they feature fairly regularly; and another two female members of Morgan and Hunter’s coven end up dating at one point. Unfortunate incident of “the b-word” being clearly avoided, as it’s likely that Sky and Raven are both bisexual, but it’s never absolutely written on the page. It’s not a whole lot, but I really liked that this was actually in here, and it’s just a normal part of the world? Like, this is a het romance story, but that didn’t mean that EVERYTHING ELSE had to be het. Which I appreciate.

And as a bonus to all of this stuff, you’ve got battles against the forces of evil, world-saving, and the logistical problems of trying to do those two things while keeping your grades up. A few bum notes, but all around a great little series that doesn’t get nearly as much credit as it deserves, and is a lot funnier and takes itself less seriously than the tag for it on tumblr might suggest (sorry folks, but it’s literally two-thirds full of melodramatic quotes. bring out the humour!). 

So yeah. Magic, Actually Decent Relationships, Romance, Teen Angst, Fun. One of my favourite teen series. 

H

[wolf-eagle]

There is darkness in light, there is pain in joy, and there are thorns on the rose.

― Cate Tiernan

[con-alas-de-angeles]

—a beautiful, striking woman with eyes as black and cold as outer space.

Cate Tiernan, Eternally Yours (Immortal Beloved #3)

[abookbumble]

Memory Box Monday:

Today in #Witchtember, I’m including a copy of the first book in Cate Tiernan’s Sweep series (titled Wicca in the UK). This is absolutely one of the books that inspired little me to grow into the author of NASCENT WITCH. The book pictured is a well-loved, discarded library copy (this girl I knew in high school stole half of my personal copies of the series and never gave them back and I’M NOT BITTER). It’s a brilliant and addictive series, and this witchy writer is so grateful to have read it all those years ago!

[seedsofwinter]

66 episodes across more than 5 and a half years. Talking about books by:

Annette Curtis Klause

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

LJ Smith

Cate Tiernan

Holly Black

Christopher Pike

RL Stine

Melissa Marr

And a few other little extras.

Listen to Backlist and Chill

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And be sure to check out their Patreon for exclusives!

[ksiega-jesiennych-demonow2]

"Tak, to dlatego robiłam wszystko, żeby zagłuszyć emocje. Bo one bolą."

- Cate Tiernan, Ukochany nieśmiertelny

[gogenevieveart]

Day 20 features Morgan Rowlands from Cate Tiernan’s “Sweep” book series. It’s kind of a fringe series I think, since I haven’t encountered many people who know about it, but it was pretty influential to me and one of the most important YA series that I read around the time I was in high school. (*semi spoiler*) It’s about a teen who finds out she’s adopted. She finds out she’s actually a witch descended from a powerful line of witches, and it follows her discovery of her parentage and lineage, good vs evil, nature vs nature, realizing her power, etc. There are 14 books in the series, and I elect not to include the 15th which is a special edition one because it’s so disjointed from the rest of the series and I hate what happened in it😆 but the first 14: excellent😆 I was already into all things magic and witchcraft and supernatural related, so this was right up my alley. It’s a funny story how I discovered them too. It’s almost old fashioned. I was waiting around in a book shop one time, and browsing the YA section. The books didn’t have much of a blurb on the back, but I had a good feeling about them and bought the first 6 books (they only had the first six at the time) in one go. Read them nonstop over the weekend. Then spent the next year or two trying to track down books 7-14. It still remains one of the series I love to reread.

[the-final-sentence]

My mother's crocuses, bright purple and yellow, had miraculously sprung back to life.

Cate Tiernan, from Eclipse

[maddiviner]

I remember these books! Me and some of my (online) witch-y friends read them back when I was a teenager in the early 2000s. I haven't thought about them in years but I remember them being really cozy and charming for the most part. Morgan was a great character, and I wonder what it would've been like as a television series.

I know the series plays fast and loose with terms and history (to put it mildly), as was common in the late 1990s, but a lot of young witches from back then remember this fondly. The same author wrote a similar series called Balefire several years later, but I haven't read it.