Jaymin EveBesprekingen

I loved it. It's the first book i read about werewolves and i really liked it.

I'm pretty sure this series will stray more into the paranormal, rather an urban fantasy territory, but I liked it. The premise was nice and the plot was kept simple and introductory to the trilogy.

At times the prose was a bit rough and, I hate to say, slightly amateurish, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book. I like her turn of phrase and will definitely explore more of her books.

It was a really light reading, I would have loved more world bulding and a little more development, but overall, I liked the main character and the Abcurse brothers!

Representation: N/A
Trigger warnings: Physical assault and injury, imprisonment
Score: Seven points out of ten.

I've never heard of this book before, but I heard there's a show based on the authors' works now. I picked this one up hoping that it would be enjoyable after being disappointed with another novel. Imagine my surprise when I liked this one and it's the first instalment of a series. Where are the second and third parts?

It starts with the first character I see, Jessa Lebron, living a typical life except for one attribute: she is an extraordinary person only because she can also shift into a wolf, hence the name 'wolf shifter.' I only got to see her alone for the opening pages until I meet more people including Mischa and Braxton. Dragon Marked slowed from there but not before the most dramatic plot twist happens: Jessa can also shift into a dragon (so she's a dual shifter? Fascinating.) The narrative stated that Jessa's ability has immense ramifications but I couldn't understand why, other than she's on the run and now in prison. What an overreaction. The conclusion is nail-biting as it finishes the first in the trilogy on a cliffhanger.

My take on the book:

Oh boy, I liked it!!!! I bought the book as a guilty pleasure for myself and of course I couldn't put it down. Read the whole book in one go and am now itching to read number 4... sooooooon...

World-building was good, we went to a few new locations in the world and in Topia. As always the authors had an eye for detail, describing everything so well, you can just about hear squishy sounds.... yeah... ewww!

Character development was great, more and more we get to experience Willa form her bond with all of the Abcurse brothers. We see how far they would go for each other and when they finally realise it themselves. If only that stupid pact wasn't there... right? ;-)

Pacing and flow were super, there was a lot happening, but it didn't feel rushed. Nor did it get boring on the downtime. Really good balance between the two.

The book in itself was well written with no (noticeable) errors. I did notice it was not as lengthy as the previous, but it ended at a good point in time.

All in all another great continuation! We had drama, intrigue aaaaaaaaaand a lot of face palming going on :D Willa is a fun character, so tagging along in her big quest of finding out who she really is and what the brothers mean to her is always an enjoyable pastime. Very much looking forward to the next book!

While the five Abcurse brothers are trying to prevent Willa from killing herself by tripping over something or whatnot, they discover a dweller rebellion is brewing. And even more.. it seems chaos has its name written all over it.

My take on the book:
Yes, I caved, I had to buy it... I just love the brothers so much. Seriously, I need 5 of my own (looking at you, Universe!) Damn you writers :D (just kidding, just kidding!!)
While Willa is rly trying her best to not cause any more trouble than she already does on a daily basis, the brothers now have a 'pact' that keeps everything disgustingly platonic... well... most of the time. Which isn't easy as Willa needs to be close to at least one of them for her fractured soul to quiet down and not hurt.
It was an easy and fun read, the flow was good and it was well written. No errors (or rly minor ones) as far as I can tell. Not as much character development as I would have liked, though that didn't rly bother me. While the plot is fairly obvious it doesn't take away from the pleasure of reading the book. I enjoyed the book very much and I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a few hours of fun, some face palming and some rly delicious men.

I think the plot by itself could've worked but the writing was just clumsy, overly sentimental, cringeworthy, crude and melodramatic.

Everything in this one is exaggerated, melodramatic, overly sentimental and everyone involved in this world apparently rolled dice for every decision.
I have listened to the first 2 hours of the audiobook and even tho there weren't any obvious contradictions, things in this world just don't make any sense.
Most facts are crafted just to navigate the plot in a planned way but in itself are completely ridiculous and make no sense whatsoever.
Things like the chain of command, power structures or all of the infinite number of rules, all of it and more are specifically designed to make this particular extremely contrived plot plausible.
The mc is a total marry sue and suffers from the same problem.
Instead of having plothole, this story contradicts with common sense.

I have listened to 1/4th of the book before dropping it.
This one so far fits perfectly into sloppy ya. It foreshadows complex and interesting political intrigue but from everything so far I just don't see it happening.
The entire book up to that point consisted of exposition very badly hidden inside a trivial plot.
It was boring and clumsy and suffered a major case of telling instead of showing.
I predict shallow melodrama instead of cunning intrigue and a major case of Mary Sue.
I expect the only reason this is not YA is because of some explicit smut.

I feel a little bad to just give this 2 blunt stars without any explanation but I really don't have much to say.
Very unoriginal, very predictable, very verbose in how the author makes sure you understand everything.
The things that stood out as most annoying to me were the endless number of plot conveniences in general and the utter stupidity of the bad guy in particular. I was somewhat engaged in the beginning when the bad guy was still mysterious but it becomes very clear later on that his actions are completely irrational and never get explained either. They only serve to further the plot.
A lot of things made very little sense, especially about the motivation and emotional landscape of the MC. The author frequently lets the MC think or say things because they kinda sound good but you just shouldn't think about any of it too hard because it has next to no substance.

It's not horrible. There wasn't one really bad flaw that gave me grey hair or anything, but it just wasn't enjoyable in its mediocrity. I guess it's a high 2-star rating.

This was more like 2.5/5 stars.
The beginning was fun but when the story picks up speed and things keep happening non-stop I got emotional whiplash from the MC's abruptly shifting moods.
Each scene individually is fine but her emotions switch in extreme ways between them. She just forgets all about her intense guilt or grief or fear or whatever as soon as the scene changes. It takes away any and all impact from all those emotions because I know they don't matter. They won't have any consequences in 5 minutes.

Something else a lot of people probably complained about, and I want to address, is the constant talking in hashtags.
Initially, I found it really irritating but I got used to it somewhat especially because some of them were really funny and captured the whole situation in just two or three words as hashtags are intended to do. But too many of them just didn't add any value. A lot of them felt forced and in no way funny, entertaining, or insightful. They worked really well as a conduit for the humor but it was just too much and a lot of them were just plain unnecessary.

I don't think I will continue the series. The ending that was supposed to keep me reading showed exactly the same issue. The MC seemingly just got over her pain in the blink of an eye as soon as her circumstances change.
One could argue that she just doesn't wallow in self-pity but no, she does that as well.
While the book has other shortcomings this was the only thing that really soured my enjoyment.

I can see why this book got so popular.
It's well-paced and entertaining. It's easy to read and the writing flows pleasantly.
But it has a lot of flaws as well.
The biggest problem is that it is willing to sacrifice continuity and consistency for a quick laugh or some cheap tension without a second thought.
The book makes a decent attempt at building a pretty big world but its insistence on some terms annoyed me after a while. You don't need to completely replace common words like "day" (with "sun-cycle") to paint a believable fantasy world. Especially such ponderous ones. What society doesn't develop short or at least pleasant-to-pronounce words for things like "day". It's like calling "freshwater" "water-that-is-clean" every time. (That's not a particularly good example but I am too stupid to come up with a better one atm.) It's just weird. Idk, that is really just a nitpick but it grated on my nerves to no end.

Especially after reading a bit into the second book, it became even more clear that the world, while having a solid base, really is just a two-dimensional backdrop.
There is very little depth anywhere really.
But I guess the book never tried to be particularly deep so that didn't bother me too much.

While the MC was able to avoid being tstl in the first book the same can't be said about the second one. The dynamic changes from her being brave but rash and just having incredibly bad luck to her being tstl but somehow being saved by her "bad luck" instead.

Beyond that the review by Helen 2.0 describes my thoughts far better than I ever could.

This first book kind of deserves 3 stars but it's not a complete story in any sense. It's really more of an introduction.
And in the second book, you'll find that all the story threads from the first one just lead to clichéed and unoriginal mediocrity.
The smut is spicy and there is a lot more of it in the second one but it tips over the edge towards reading like a porn script way too often. You can basically pick any professional porn with a focus on cunnilingus and get a very similar experience.
So what is left then? The MC as a character is pretty entertaining.
This is one of the rare examples of how an MC actually manages to impart some wisdom with enough subtlety that a discerning reader could recognize it as what it is but I never felt like the book beat me over the head with it.
The main character felt believable, genuine, and internally consistent. I genuinely liked her.
I feel the MC was wasted on this utterly mediocre story.

It was okay

This book is a little different than I normally read in this genre. But it was an okay book, but I don't think I am going to read book two.

I got this book on a whim. Actually I accidentally bought the three books set. And I'm not complaining at all. I thought that it was a fantasy book. Like dark fantasy. But no it is actually a real life situation. As in things that could happen. So I guess that's called Urban fantasy? I don't know. Anyway I got through book one within a matter of hours loved it. Book two got through that one within the matter of hours as well. I'm now currently on book 3, kind of in the middle I'm assuming. And I am loving this story. I'm glad that I made the mistake of accidentally buying a three book set. And then I find out there's another book. Yay. I can't wait. Anyway that's all.

I absolutely love this book series. For anyone out there who is debating reading it, read it. I swear you won't regret it. I don't read very many urban fantasy books, but I'm glad that I accidentally bought this box set. And like I said in my last review, there is another book as well. I just can't wait to read it.

Is it bad, or wrong of me to say how in love I am with dylan? I feel his pain. I feel his feelings and his frustration. And I feel how she's giving him mixed messages. Because all through the book she talks about how into him she is but she loves the other. LOL anyway by the way, how come we never found out who it was that grabbed her in the car?

First off I'd like to say that I absolutely love this story. I love dylan. Have from the very get-go. However, there was a huge gap. They just seem like it was like one story and then another but there was nothing to bridge that gap. So although I love the story. There was just things that didn't make sense and they didn't loop them together and it just seemed like there was a lot of hanging. So although it's a great story, and I would recommend it to anyone, I have to warn them just to be vigilant. You have to pay very close attention so that you don't lose the storyline. Even without that bridge, if you pay attention to the storyline you can build your own bridges. I love this author, so I'm going to give the rest of their books a chance. I'm about to read some sort of shifter book right now. So cross your fingers folks, I hope that I like the rest of the books. And I absolutely positively adore this series. I hope there's more. Oh and that's another thing, I don't like the fact that these stories are jumping so far ahead that they're giving hints that are not so subtle to the other relationships in the group. If you're going to write specific books for specific characters, you should not talk about their relationship status at all in the books that you're currently reading. I don't know if that makes sense but it does in my head lol. Other than that everything is great. I would like to also add that I'm using voice to text so there is a very good possibility that this didn't translate 100%, but if you have questions please feel free to ask me. And add me if you're an admin reader lol.

Okay I'm going to try and get through this without going off on a tangent. You know like the first book in the series. Now at first I thought this book had promise. The reason I read this book is because I read dark Legacy before this and I really enjoyed the series and I noticed that it was written by two different people, so I thought well you know I'm going to give this a chance. I couldn't figure out which author it was that kept me enthralled in dark legacy. For the most part dark Legacy was an enjoyable series. There was only one book that I was a little confused in but I got over it. Because the series overall was great. So I decided to read the shadow shifters, I figured I'd start from the beginning. Well, this first book, it seemed like the author was unfocused, maybe sick. And I don't mean this in a bad way, I just mean that her focus was all over the place. She didn't seem to have a clear idea of what she wanted her character to be. The heroine, had several different main stories. so in other words instead of having a main story, with kind of offsets or offshoots to the side, it felt like the book was written as though the main character was following several different main story lines. And I do not want to give full-on explanations except to say that there was no character tying. For an example, and I'm not going to point out every single area where I lost the thread but for example. She seemed to make an extreme impression on truckers on her little adventure, and the author really kept your focus on these truckers making it appear that somehow down the road they would have a bigger explanation. However it was like that storyline was just dropped. Like completely forgotten. And instead of erasing that whole idea, or that whole chapter, she just dropped it. Dead link. There is nothing more I hate in a story is then a dead link. It's distracting. It's frustrating. It makes me despise the author's writing style because you would think, with all of these other books they've written, that they would understand that you need to tie up these links. There is nothing worse for reader to have to imagine what the hell the author was trying to tell you and then just decide to drop it. And I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just tend to say what's on my mind and not know how to word it properly. So this is what is on my mind, this book, was one big tangent thought. Better yet 30 thoughts. I will admit that the storyline, several of story lines actually lol, had some promise. I just wish the author had chosen one, or even two, and stuck with it until the end of the book. I would have rather had a series that had 10 books, then have one book that couldn't make up its mind. So to me that made the book extremely unenjoyable. There were so many promising leads there. You could have gone with this bond between Jax and torin, with her and had them deal with that dynamic. You could have gone with her escaping the pack and living her life. And finding love, and then having it torn away from her. You could have gone with her relationship with her birth mother. You could have gone with her relationship to her pack. Maybe having the pack turn their back on their Alpha for a change. There were so many different storylines that you could have gone with, but instead of choosing one you chose to go with everything that could have popped into your head at that particular moment while you were writing her story. And then, drop it.. no follow through..So to me, and I realize that everybody under the Sun for some odd reason, has given this five stars, I can't. I enjoy the main character. I feel for her. So that's why I gave it to stars. Anybody else I wouldn't have. I also gave her two stars because I liked the previous series and I wanted to give this one a chance. So let's move on to the next book for my review for that book. and sorry I know that it's probably not the best review. I know that people out there are probably screaming in defense of this author. Please don't think that I have a personal vendetta against this author. I know that's what a lot of people seem to think when someone disagrees with them. It's none of vendetta. It's just an honest opinion.

Hi again. Miss me? All right so in this book I gave it three stars. And here are the reasons why. I enjoyed the overall story. So right off the bat you got a star for that. Lol. The storyline was more solid. It wasn't perfect but it was solid. The author grabbed a hold of her idea, and she actually managed to stick with it for the majority of the book. So yes I enjoyed that. There's another star. I absolutely love the dynamic between shadow and Mera. And I love watching that relationship develop. So there's the other star. Lol. Overall I liked this book. The reason that I lost two stars on this was because one, the relationship with her sub characters seem to be unstable. There is 1 point where Mera wants to introduce Simone to angel, and Angel just disappears. No one ever explains why that happened. And that really bothered me. I understand that introducing friends to friends can be complicated, you know because their relationship may not be solid or maybe the friend that disappeared felt insecure, but we never find out why she disappeared. We never find why this pain was caused. It was brief, it was fleeting, but it was there and it made an impact. So I wish the author had explained that a little bit better. Or at least giving closure to it. That's the word that I was missing before in my last review. Closure. Tying up ends. You know the closure of the storyline. That's what I was missing in the other book. So in this book the other thing that lost a star was dannie. It just didn't make sense. I know she lost herr sh*t, pardon me her mind. But still this should have been something else. More explanation maybe. I don't know. For Dannie to drop Mara into an abusive situation even though she was corrupt, she should have somehow cushioned the blow. Because they make it sound like Dannie did this because in her corrupt mine thought that this would help Mera, and keep the balance. She didn't want to kill her, but at the same time and her delusion she thought she was doing the right thing. So she thought she was doing the right thing, she managed to manipulate everyone's minds, why didn't she take away the abuse that Mera had suffered? That's still not explained. Anyway moving on, I'm, I'd say about a quarter of the way through or maybe 2/3 LOL math is not my friend I'm about halfwayish through the next book. The conclusion. So let's see what happens that. I'll see you at the end of that book. But I want to thank the author for at least attempting to be more solid with this book. The first one flopped, this one at least you have something to grab a hold of.

Okay so I've given it a four star for this book. The author managed to stay on point for most of the book, however of course there were some parts that I'm still absolutely confused over. The reason I gave it for stars is because as I mentioned stayed on point, mostly. I enjoyed the ending. I agreed with the punishment. I am happy certain situations worked out. And I can't wait till the next book. Which is funny considering that it was supposed to be the conclusion lol. What I didn't like was we still don't know who the hell Sam was. I find it odd that this bizarre character just all the sudden popped up out of nowhere. They don't explain her at all. So that made me lose interest in her. Throughout the entire series something that I absolutely despised. inky. Throat the entire series we're talking about mature situations. And then all the sudden that name? Really? I could have handled it if it was just ink. But to add the immature, childish y. It just didn't make any sense. Honestly every time that name popped up, it changed everything. Especially since they were using that name during sexual situations. It made me feel dirty. And not in a good way. Every time that name popped up, I automatically felt like they were adding an extremely childish situation. Or rather childlike entity, to the situation and that is beyond wrong. I suppose. And it made my skin crawl. So I had to drop the y each and every time. Other than that it was an ok series. I still think that one reviewers take on the first book was perfect. She seemed like she was having a bipolar manic episode while she wrote the book. And it seemed to have calmed down in the last two books. It was still there. But at least it was better.

A world with gods, sols (that can become gods) and dwellers (slaves) the girl Willa who fumbles everything there is to fumble is called to serve the sols. 5 brothers chose her to be their own dweller...

The beginning was slow and i was tempted to drop the whole book because it was somehow too much that went wrong for the MC. But i am glad i stayed because at a certain point the story gets intriguing.

The author knows how to give the reader some hints that he can use to spin ideas about what will happen. Kind of like you are half a step before the protagonists. I really like books that can do that.
There is a lot of sexual tension in the book.

What annoys me is that the main characters are always called by different names. Will/Willa/Soldier/Rock or Strength/Two/Rome... I prefer to see one name and associate that with a character directly. The switching is not really helping.

Probably more towards the 2.5. This was alright, nothing special but fairly decent. It was mostly straight forwards about what you'd expect of a paranormal romance. The characters were okay. I'll probably pick up the next one.

This book is the start of the Shadow Beast Shifters series. Mera is a wolf on the cusp of her first shift. But her only goal is to get control of her wolf and finally get out of her pack. Her father betrayed the Alpha years before, so Mera and her mother were treated like outcasts. Mera was abused, bullied, and tormented constantly that she simply stopped fighting back because it always made it worse. When she finally shifts, she realizes the Alpha's son is her true mate. But he rejects her. And she is finally able to leave and encounters the Shadow Beast, the creator of all shifters. And thus begins the slow burn ship of the Shadow Beast and his "Sunshine" Mera.

This book was really good in the beginning and really good in the end. But the middle was kind of slow and some parts a bit ... silly? That's not really the right word. Maybe eye roll-y. Corny. Contrived. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this book for the most part, but it does end on a major cliffhanger. So be sure to have book two on stand by.

This cliffhanger was … traumatizing. Let’s just get to book 3 please.

Just a few things about this book … all questions answered. We find out what Mera is and why she’s able to do what she can do. We see Shadow and Mera finally become “Shadowshine”. But the cliffhanger changes everything. This book was a bit slower and harder to get into than the first book. Not quite as good in my opinion despite the spice level being higher. But definitely have book 3 ready so you can dive right in. Because I cannot stress how messed up this ending is.