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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
mysterious
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read the whole book in 1 day. Easy read. I'm hooked! Cant wait to read the next book in the series!
This was not very good. And it took me way longer than I would have liked to acclimate to Moning’s writing style for this book (because the Highlander series does not have the same flow).
My biggest gripe: there is absolutely no f*cking romance in this book. None. Zilch. Zero. Am I taking crazy pills? Why is this series considered a romance?
The narration is absurd: the heroine goes off on so many annoying tangents that don’t actually move the plot forward. At one point, Mac is musing about buying Green Day’s Greatist Hits album so she can listen to “Basket Case” (which she doesn’t know the name of so she instead just fires off the lyrics). Girl! I don’t care - can we get back to solving your sister’s brutal murder?
The world building is excellent though and I do find myself intrigued as to where this is all going to go. People seem to enjoy the next book more (and I did suffer through Moning’s first Highlander book) so I shall continue.
My biggest gripe: there is absolutely no f*cking romance in this book. None. Zilch. Zero. Am I taking crazy pills? Why is this series considered a romance?
The narration is absurd: the heroine goes off on so many annoying tangents that don’t actually move the plot forward. At one point, Mac is musing about buying Green Day’s Greatist Hits album so she can listen to “Basket Case” (which she doesn’t know the name of so she instead just fires off the lyrics). Girl! I don’t care - can we get back to solving your sister’s brutal murder?
The world building is excellent though and I do find myself intrigued as to where this is all going to go. People seem to enjoy the next book more (and I did suffer through Moning’s first Highlander book) so I shall continue.
adventurous
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
Hmm I didn't finish the Highlander series and it seems like this has a LOT of callbacks to characters and lore from that series. Definitely a low burn between Mac and Barrons. This strongly reminded me of Sookie Stackhouse. Mac is also a Southern bell, blonde, young, gifted with supernatural powers. We barely know anything about Barrons so it makes you want to keep reading the series just to learn what his deal is.
Mac goes to Dublin, Ireland to track down the murder of her sister Alina. All she has is a voicemail message from her with a bunch of crazy Irish words. She manages to find her way to a bookstore where she meets Jericho Barrons who is all mysterious and warns her off getting involved in things she doesn't understand. She continues following clues for Alina, finds out she stopped going to close and was looking like a drug addict. Mac starts seeing horrifying beings, the Gray Man and others, who when she tells Barrons he tells her they're Unseelie and that she's a Null, she has the ability to see Fae and if she touches them she can freeze them for a time. She can also sense Fae objects, like these Dark Hallows books of power, and other Fae.
Barrons uses to her to track down objects of power (OOPs), including a stone or something that can be used to read a Dark Hallow.
Mac learns she and Alina were adopted and someone warned their parents to never let them travel to Ireland.
Eventually Mac tracks down these small areas of Dublin that are hidden from most people. She observes Barrons go into one. She goes in herself alone and finds pictures of Alina with a beautiful man, who later she learns is the Lord Master Unseelie whose grand plan is opening this portal to an Unseelie prison to let them into the mortal world. He was using Alina to open the portal and wants to use Mac now. There's also a battle with a vampire whose name starts with M.
After the battle Mac asks Barrons what is he because he seems to have super strength, but he won't say. Then Mac detects a Dark Hallows passing by in a car. The book ends with Mac thinking how Unseelie are going to pour into this world and a war is brewing.
Barrons uses to her to track down objects of power (OOPs), including a stone or something that can be used to read a Dark Hallow.
Mac learns she and Alina were adopted and someone warned their parents to never let them travel to Ireland.
Eventually Mac tracks down these small areas of Dublin that are hidden from most people. She observes Barrons go into one. She goes in herself alone and finds pictures of Alina with a beautiful man, who later she learns is the Lord Master Unseelie whose grand plan is opening this portal to an Unseelie prison to let them into the mortal world. He was using Alina to open the portal and wants to use Mac now. There's also a battle with a vampire whose name starts with M.
After the battle Mac asks Barrons what is he because he seems to have super strength, but he won't say. Then Mac detects a Dark Hallows passing by in a car. The book ends with Mac thinking how Unseelie are going to pour into this world and a war is brewing.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I like it!
it reminds me of buffy the vampire slayer.
it reminds me of buffy the vampire slayer.
2.5/5 stars!
Wow this book was very disappointing to me. I honestly think if the writing style was different I would of liked it a lot more. The writing style was almost like a diary entry. Constant monologues you felt that you were being told a story and not actually going through the motions with the main character. Multiple times the main character breaks the fourth wall for example: “ I won’t bore you with the details of the monsters that came through the doorway that day. Barrons and I would discuss them later and try to identify their castes, and you’ll meet them soon enough, anyway”. Like please do bore me with the details! I want details!
This happens multiple times throughout the book and it drove me completely mad. I felt so detached from the story with the wall breaking and the main character having constant inner monologues it felt like nothing was actually happening in real time she would go off on tangents when the story was getting good and you would start to get immersed and it would just pull you right out. It’s a bit like those dreams where you finally fall asleep and for whatever reason you are jolted awake. It felt like that consistently throughout.
Also a lot of the lore was I have to admit, interesting. I liked that Karen Moning included her own lore and some real Irish folklore. But some of it was very hard to get into or understand because like my points above a lot of the explaining was done in retrospect. For example it wouldn’t be Mac looking at a stone and saying what’s that? And maybe Baron says on this is a something or other it would be Mac finding a mystical stone and being like ‘ oh yeah I remember when Baron told me about this...’ and then it would tell you in italic a conversation they had in the past it wouldn’t actually happen in present time this happened a lot so for taking in information you weren’t drip fed it throughout the book it was sort of thrown at you in a confusing way. That’s something else that also bothered me was it was all telling and not a lot of showing. Too much retrospect and annoying monologues that sometimes wasn’t even relating to what was going on just makes the book almost a haze . I just truly didn’t enjoy the writing style.
What I did enjoy about the story was Mac herself. I like that that the author wrote her as a barbie girl type character her juicy couture handbag and her frosted tip nail polish she wasn’t the typical shy quiet brunette she was your typical valley girl type character which I enjoyed. She had a lot of layers and I felt she was very smart and determined to find her sister. She also had good character development.She seemed like an in depth character which I feel I would of enjoyed if it wasn’t for the writing style. I have to admit though Barrons was okay...just he felt empty to me. I didn’t really feel a spark between them.
It is such a shame that I didn’t enjoy this because I love any book that is based in Ireland or Scotland I feel they have such rich folklore and it just has such a cosy and almost romantic feeling to it. I love rich lore and detailed descriptions I’m an absolute sucker for supernatural romances but I just didn’t enjoy this. I don’t know if anyone else felt similarly about this and everyone seems to love it! Which I can understand as I think the writing is actually good itself the descriptions and detailed and interesting but it’s just written in such a strange way to me.
Wow this book was very disappointing to me. I honestly think if the writing style was different I would of liked it a lot more. The writing style was almost like a diary entry. Constant monologues you felt that you were being told a story and not actually going through the motions with the main character. Multiple times the main character breaks the fourth wall for example: “ I won’t bore you with the details of the monsters that came through the doorway that day. Barrons and I would discuss them later and try to identify their castes, and you’ll meet them soon enough, anyway”. Like please do bore me with the details! I want details!
This happens multiple times throughout the book and it drove me completely mad. I felt so detached from the story with the wall breaking and the main character having constant inner monologues it felt like nothing was actually happening in real time she would go off on tangents when the story was getting good and you would start to get immersed and it would just pull you right out. It’s a bit like those dreams where you finally fall asleep and for whatever reason you are jolted awake. It felt like that consistently throughout.
Also a lot of the lore was I have to admit, interesting. I liked that Karen Moning included her own lore and some real Irish folklore. But some of it was very hard to get into or understand because like my points above a lot of the explaining was done in retrospect. For example it wouldn’t be Mac looking at a stone and saying what’s that? And maybe Baron says on this is a something or other it would be Mac finding a mystical stone and being like ‘ oh yeah I remember when Baron told me about this...’ and then it would tell you in italic a conversation they had in the past it wouldn’t actually happen in present time this happened a lot so for taking in information you weren’t drip fed it throughout the book it was sort of thrown at you in a confusing way. That’s something else that also bothered me was it was all telling and not a lot of showing. Too much retrospect and annoying monologues that sometimes wasn’t even relating to what was going on just makes the book almost a haze . I just truly didn’t enjoy the writing style.
What I did enjoy about the story was Mac herself. I like that that the author wrote her as a barbie girl type character her juicy couture handbag and her frosted tip nail polish she wasn’t the typical shy quiet brunette she was your typical valley girl type character which I enjoyed. She had a lot of layers and I felt she was very smart and determined to find her sister. She also had good character development.She seemed like an in depth character which I feel I would of enjoyed if it wasn’t for the writing style. I have to admit though Barrons was okay...just he felt empty to me. I didn’t really feel a spark between them.
It is such a shame that I didn’t enjoy this because I love any book that is based in Ireland or Scotland I feel they have such rich folklore and it just has such a cosy and almost romantic feeling to it. I love rich lore and detailed descriptions I’m an absolute sucker for supernatural romances but I just didn’t enjoy this. I don’t know if anyone else felt similarly about this and everyone seems to love it! Which I can understand as I think the writing is actually good itself the descriptions and detailed and interesting but it’s just written in such a strange way to me.
Wow, it's been a long time since I finished a book that I disliked that much. I kept waiting for Mac to pull her head out of her pretty pink "petunia" (her euphemism, not mine), but it never happened. She begrudgingly admitted the existence of the Fae (y'know, the premise of the book?) after being repeatedly hit over the head with it. There was way, way too much description of her physical appearance and accessory choices for my taste, and did we really need those "sexy" almost rape scenes? I didn't think so. I can tell Ms. Moning got her start on romance though, this reads like a bad bodice-ripper take on urban fantasy. One star it is.
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No