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

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

More than 3 stars but I don’t think it’s a four star either. I always enjoy Jaymin Eve books and I always read them really quickly and this one wasn’t an exception. I don’t tend to like bubbly heroines so I didn’t love Mera. The cliche of a heroine isn’t afraid of the big powerful hero when everyone else is just isn’t something I enjoy so that definitely decreased my enjoyment somewhat.

I did enjoy Shadow more, though it is amusing to me that a god would wear a Henley, ripped jeans, and army boots. I also like when the hero has a group of really close friends and that happens in this book. I’m interested to see what comes about with his story.

I did feel like the narrative arc of this book was a bit weird. At the beginning, Mera runs away from her abusive pack and then is brought back and then the plot starts. I don’t think that story thread added anything to the story and I don’t know why it happened. There were some times the plot seemed circular and there’s some repetition that bothered me. There’s also the fact that this book ends in a serious cliffhanger where it basically just stops in the middle of a scene. The plot itself was engaging and I did enjoy some of the twists and turns but there were still a few things I would liked to see cleaned up in the sequels ( )