A review by eesh25
Mine to Possess by Nalini Singh

3.0

Thanks to my exams, both my reading and reviewing are all over the place. I've started four books since the 6th but haven't finished a single one and I've been putting this review off for a week. Even now, with a few days off, I'm not in the reviewing mood, so bear with me please.

This book follows Clay, a sentinel in the DarkRiver pack of changelings. He's got a dark and violent past and that's turned him kind of... dark and violent. He constantly feel like he's on the edge of going rogue. Then, someone from the past, someone he thought was dead, comes back and there's hope. Talin faced some very traumatizing things at a very early age. Clay was her best friend. But due to a violent act, she's separated from him and, in her trauma, asks her social worker to tell Clay that she died in a car crash. Now she in trouble and has no other option than to tell Clay the truth so that he can help her.

First of all, can you believe this girl? She practically fakes her own death — sure she was just a kid then but she had 20 years to correct her lie. She didn't — and then demands that Clay help her? And people say that I'm unfair to female characters. Well, if they're going to be like this, what do you expect?

On top of that, the book was still all about her and her sensitive little feelings. She pushed her best friend away, didn't contact him for 20 years, and still got to spend the entire novel whining about how she was insecure and afraid that he would leave her just because he left her before. Fuck you! He didn't leave you. He went to juvie for saving your life! The least you could do is apologise and try to make it up to him instead of demanding comfort and being pissed at the guy because he didn't immediately get over your faked death!

Ugh!

Before I started this review, I only disliked Talin. Now I hate her. There's a serious case of special snowflake syndrome going on with her, and this was all just made worse by the fact that Clay was made out to be the bad guy for being mad at her. And his emotional trauma was never touched upon. He was just supposed to get over it because he's a guy and he's tough. Well guess what? Being tough doesn't make you immune to emotions! How could Clay's feelings just be dismissed like that! I am seriously pissed off right now.

But... rant over. I don't want to spend much more time talking about the fact that the girl who ran out on the guy got to whine about her, practically unfounded, fear of abandonment for over half the book while he was criticised for being angry for half a chapter. And don't even get me started on the possessive bullshit she pulled despite not having any right after what she did.

Then there was their relationship. I didn't feel it. They were best friends and mates so they got together. That's all there was to it. There could have been a connection between them but I just felt like that chunk of the book was missing. And at this point, I'm starting to wonder why I've given the book 3 stars.

Oh wait, I know. Talin is human.

For the last three books, we've stayed mostly with the changelings or the Psy. But this installment introduced us to the humans part of the world and I really liked getting introduced to that. Humans are, in fact, not incompetent. They're just highly underestimated, mainly by the Psy. With the changelings, they prefer to live in their own packs so they aren't always involved with humans.

But here they were, and it was great. Another thing that was great was seeing the past characters and the relationships, the way they've grown. Things with the Psy council are seriously amping up and I'm so excited for that. I mean, they're still pulling shit but it's more build up at this point. Things are gonna blow and people are gonna die, hopefully not any of my faves, and I can't wait.

In the end, I can conclude that anything that didn't have to do with Talin or the romance was good. I was interested in Clay and I wish he was given more of an arc. This is not a book I would recommend, but it introduced some pretty important characters so if you're going to continue the series, you should read it.