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jennraffe's review
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
goliathfrog's review
3.0
Debut book from a new author. If you’re familiar with the indie author romance scene, especially PNR RH, this book will feel pretty familiar to you. It’s unique enough to be its own thing, but there are a lot of elements that are common in the genre.
There were some grammatical pet peeves that cropped up, in particular the overuse of things like “Rowan and I’s ___”. The plot also felt a bit rushed at times, sorta odd pacing. Some of the elements also felt inconsistent, not necessarily plot holes but just unanswered questions. There were a lot of ‘info dumps’ where the author would explain certain elements of the world building through conversations (like explaining the shifter dynamics and mating).
This is SUPER common with new authors, and I can imagine that as this author grows she will develop and hone this aspect of writing more.
A lot of authors in this genre tend to go kinda overboard with the shock factor elements, in particular abuse. This book is no exception… there is extreme abuse in this book both in present tense and past tense. I feel like this is a bit of an issue across the genre and authors continue to raise the bar. While I don’t have any triggers, I’m not really a fan of this trend of escalating these elements especially when the aftermath isn’t appropriately managed by the author. By this I mean, the level of trauma the FMC endured isn’t addressed in a realistic way by her reactions, recovery, socialization. In this case, she seems to really overcome a lot within about a week and gains a lot of sudden confidence without really doing any psych work to get there. I just don’t believe this. This is an extremely difficult subject for authors to get right, so I didn’t necessarily dock for this. I know a lot of people are fine with this stuff being glossed past, but I feel like she progressed too quickly to be believable.
My main issue isn’t really with this storyline or book, but rather the particular trope of kidnap victims that are held in captivity for their entire childhood. I’ve talked about this before in other reviews, but this is an EXTREMELY hard trope to write because it really requires the reader to suspend their disbelief. Our MC was kidnapped at 3 and never sent to school or socialized. There are things in the books that she is able to describe, identify, and know that just wouldn’t be possible if this were the case. I just can’t get over that part of the story. I will say this author actually does a better job than most do with managing this major challenge in this trope, but there are still moments of internal dialogue where I was like …how does she know what that is.
I think this author and this series are overall promising though! I think this was a very difficult story to write and considering it was a first book for the author I was pretty impressed by that. I look forward to seeing her develop as an author in the future
There were some grammatical pet peeves that cropped up, in particular the overuse of things like “Rowan and I’s ___”. The plot also felt a bit rushed at times, sorta odd pacing. Some of the elements also felt inconsistent, not necessarily plot holes but just unanswered questions. There were a lot of ‘info dumps’ where the author would explain certain elements of the world building through conversations (like explaining the shifter dynamics and mating).
This is SUPER common with new authors, and I can imagine that as this author grows she will develop and hone this aspect of writing more.
A lot of authors in this genre tend to go kinda overboard with the shock factor elements, in particular abuse. This book is no exception… there is extreme abuse in this book both in present tense and past tense. I feel like this is a bit of an issue across the genre and authors continue to raise the bar. While I don’t have any triggers, I’m not really a fan of this trend of escalating these elements especially when the aftermath isn’t appropriately managed by the author. By this I mean, the level of trauma the FMC endured isn’t addressed in a realistic way by her reactions, recovery, socialization. In this case, she seems to really overcome a lot within about a week and gains a lot of sudden confidence without really doing any psych work to get there. I just don’t believe this. This is an extremely difficult subject for authors to get right, so I didn’t necessarily dock for this. I know a lot of people are fine with this stuff being glossed past, but I feel like she progressed too quickly to be believable.
My main issue isn’t really with this storyline or book, but rather the particular trope of kidnap victims that are held in captivity for their entire childhood. I’ve talked about this before in other reviews, but this is an EXTREMELY hard trope to write because it really requires the reader to suspend their disbelief. Our MC was kidnapped at 3 and never sent to school or socialized. There are things in the books that she is able to describe, identify, and know that just wouldn’t be possible if this were the case. I just can’t get over that part of the story. I will say this author actually does a better job than most do with managing this major challenge in this trope, but there are still moments of internal dialogue where I was like …how does she know what that is.
I think this author and this series are overall promising though! I think this was a very difficult story to write and considering it was a first book for the author I was pretty impressed by that. I look forward to seeing her develop as an author in the future
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