belledandy91 's review for:

Gray Back Broken Bear by T.S. Joyce
2.0
I was really looking forward to Easton's story so maybe it's normal I ended up disappointed. I enjoyed what was there, but there was so much lacking for me.

A constant theme in all of these books are "I understand now I had to go through all of this shit so I could appreciate what we have". Which fine, true to a point, and tragic backstories are a big part of a lot of shifter books. But that doesn't mean every single character has to suddenly appreciate how much their life sucked for years until they were at the end of their rope and ready to give up before finding their mate.

Some of the things I was disappointed with are below, hidden as spoilers.

Spoiler Her parents telling her "we knew you bonded but we didn't like it so we took you away and watched you wither", them just saying sorry, and her saying there's nothing to forgive. They watched her get depressed for 10+ years and were like "she'll get over it even though we know she won't" and encouraged her to start courting a guy who was cutting her off from anything she enjoyed. Their culture had her thinking that was how it was supposed to be and that she was already being horrible by making him wait a year even though she was of breeding age. Caden barely existed other than as a reason for her to finally look for Easton - there wasn't even an explanation for why he had chosen to court her. Easton feeling betrayed she watched him flounder as a child alone in the forest then immediately being like "oh, you weren't supposed to tell? That's ok then". I get she was a child too and it wasn't her fault for how her family raised her, my problem was how it felt like he just flipped a 180 the second she said two words.