434 reviews for:

Shadow Lands

Stacey Marie Brown

3.79 AVERAGE

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
adventurous dark tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Really boring, disappointing end to the series.

Constant shifting perspectives, each one the same thing over and over. Just another character sexually frustrated wanting their "mate," and then they finally bang, and then big drama, and then repeat. It honestly felt like the book could have been 1/3 of the length, which is extraordinarily frustrating considering I thought the other books could have been longer.

By requesting more pages, I wanted more substance also. Guess I should have made that clear.
dark emotional fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Tedious, repetitive with no real resolution. What was the point?
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A lot more spice due to the amount of different character pov chapters
dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A disappointing end to a pretty good series. This book was so repetitive and the same themes drilled into you probably a hundred times. She should have edited the series down to end about two books ago. The different perspectives only really changed when a steamy scene was coming and it seemed like the same one ten times just with different people. I hate that it was only added for this one book- getting 5 books in and then the POVs are now all the side characters only to add romances that barely had any build up really killed the pacing and the plot. With how “on-the-edge-of-your-seat” the rest of the series was, this one dragged.
It was pretty annoying how anytime literally anything would happen someone would “bellow ‘Noooooooooo’”. I read in a review for one of the other books that it was annoying and instantly it was distracting. I really only finished it because I had put so much time into this series that I knew I had to see how it ended. It kinda dragged down the rest of the series for me, really highlighting some of the amateur writing. For most of it, the writing never bothered me much because the story was so good but after recycling the same thing fifteen times it starts to lose its excitement.

Specific things that annoyed me (spoilers below)
Brexley running off left little to no effect on the characters or the plot. Showing her perspective while she was gone really lessened the suspense i think the author was going for by going so long with Warwick’s perspective.
Lukas and Kek dying was really anticlimactic. With all the times they pulled out a last minute save of a main character, she should have made their deaths more impactful in the moment. Not to mention that was the least talked about romance in the entire story (which i also wish was different as it was the only unique romance of all the main characters) and Ash becoming mean and shit at the end had much less of an impact, which sucks because he was one of my favorite characters. To me, I would have rather heard his perspective than scorpion or most definitely Caden.
SPEAKING OF CADEN; the author did not do enough to salvage this character. Hanna even had more of a character arc- becoming feral and thinking she may die really made her sympathetic and changed her character. Caden started as a spoiled puppy and turned into an angry puppy. He never really agreed with the cause, which is weird. He just walked around like “ugh I’m a super powerful fae now and even though i know for a fact i was brainwashed and I see all the evidence that fae are not monsters including the one i love, i still don’t want to pick a side but fuck my dad and man i need to fuck now”. I didn’t care even a little from day one to the very end.

I have more probably but these are my main issues that made this book a drag to get through. I finished all the rest of the books within one day of starting it and it took me like a week to finish this one. It’s a shame but the other books pushed it to 3 stars- it’s really more 2-2.5.
adventurous dark fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The spice gets soooo repetitive and boring, just the same thing every single time. But overall I enjoyed the series. Was it the best writing ever? No. But I definitely ate it up!