Review: Love this series!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 5, 2013
I have read and reviewed all of these books and love this series.  It makes for a super long review, but here are all three:Book One:I am not even really sure where to begin. There was so much I liked about this book. While I am going to try really hard not to give any spoilers that will impact your enjoyment of this story, I can not guarantee that I will not inadvertently over share. I apologize in advance, if I do. This is the first book in a trilogy about a woman who discovers she is a witch, as she is helping to bring down an evil organization. I know this sounds like many witch story arcs, but this story is anything, but typical. It incorporates familiar lore with new lore, making for very interesting characters and plot twists.I'll tell you what I liked about it:* Devan is a character I could easily relate to and care about. She is strong, yet vulnerable. She cares about others and often puts their needs before her own, but is never a door mat. While she is struggling with a horrid past, she uses it not as a weakness, but as the strength she needs to move forward and make things right.* This book has witches, vampires, a faery-witch, a shaman, dhampirs, and a sheoque.*I love that the characters are in their mid-thirties (or older - hundreds of years old ;0)). So many of books in this genre have young adult aged characters and I loved having characters closer to my age.* You finish the story feeling like the story is complete, yet wanting more. There is no "I can not believe the author ended this here and now I have to wait months/a year to find out the end of the story" angst.*Neither the love story nor the mystery/adventure overshadowed the other. It is a nice blend making this a good book for people who love romance as well as those loving the suspense of a good vs evil conflict.*The bending in this book (this may be spoilerish) is the bending of time and the author somehow avoided most all of the things that usually irk me about this sort of thing. I am an uber geek about time distortions of any kind, so this made me happy.*Laugh if you will, but this book gave me a brilliant recipe idea I can not wait to try and a fun desserty sandwich to make at home. The recipe they used was basically a grilled fluffernutter (so yummy). My brilliant (possibly brilliant, possibly yuck, but I am thinking optimistically)is a nutella/fluff sandwich grilled. If you try it before I get to the store for nutella, please let me know how it is.Overall, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next two books in this series. I am thinking it will have more Vamps (since it is bite) and I do love vamps. I think I know what shift will be about, but I will wait until number two gets out so I do not look foolish by jumping to conclusions ;). I will say, for the record, I do not believe it will be were related. Those of you who know me, probably realize I can not wait to find out and I will probably pester the author about my idea within minutes of posting this hehehe.This is not a YA book and I would recommend it for people 18 and older. The violence is not too dark, but there are scenes of adult fun not geared towards a younger audience.I received this as an arc, so I can not comment on the formatting or proof reading of the final product. I use a kindle and the formatting seemed really strong. There were some editing errors, but they were not distracting to me (the nerd) and may have been fixed before the final product was released.Book 2:I really enjoyed reading the second book in this series. It was every bit as good as the first one. While this is the second one in a trilogy, if you were to pick this book up and read it without having read the first book, I think you would have no problem following the story and immersing yourself into the world Olivia created. I think there could potentiallyy be some confusion as to who all the players were, but I think this book can work fine as a stand alone.Here are some of the things I liked about this book:*I really felt myself connecting to Jill even though she is very much unlike myself (that is not necessarily a good thing - she is pretty amazing at times).*The way Olivia revealed Jill and Doc's story really drew me in. I am not always a fan of flashbacks, because I feel like a lot of the time they are used as an easy way out to explain something the author forgot to write in. In this case, however, they were used brilliantly. I loved how Jill's stories, past and present, were woven together.*Robbie's fate was absolutely, positively fitting and made me smile.*It made me happy that Devan played an important role in this book, even though the first book was "her" book.*Langston - I have nothing more to add to this, just Langston.*The ending made me super, duper happy. I saw it going many ways and none of them good, so when I read the final chapter and epilogue I probably had the hugest grin ever.*I read this book in one night. Why? Every time I put it down, I felt compelled to pick it up again. Maybe it was reverie ;).Once again, I am reminded why I am a fan of Olivia's works. I am looking forward to the final book in this trilogy and will most likely be bugging her for an advanced copy once the release date is close because I simply will be unable to wait for the release date.Book 3:Reading this book was very bitter sweet for me. I love this series and did not want it to end, so I read it very, very slowly. I never do this, but I wanted it to last. I should have gone to the very end first because Olivia mentions that while this story arc is complete, she will be writing novels in the future from this amazingly awesome world she has created. PHEW!!!!What I love about this series and what I think really sets it apart from most series in this genre is that while there is a main story arc, each book is completely different and fresh. Not only do they focus on different characters, but they are just so unique in and of themselves. I have no idea if what I am trying to say is coming across or if I am making any sense to anyone but myself, but trust me in the fact that you do not feel like you are reading the same basic story over and over again.I reread the synopsis to make sure I was not giving away any spoilers and had to erase everything I said about the characters of Nick and Gerry. So, here is the non-spoiler version: I loved both of their characters and watching them deal with the secrets being kept was one of the things that made it difficult for me to put this book down. There was one scene between the two of them that was very uncomfortable for me. It was handled beautifully and fit in with the story, but by the nature of it it was difficult for me to read.I think that Olivia did a beautiful job pulling the overall story arc together. I am trying to stay spoiler free, but the timing of this book is such that it does not begin after book two ends and that adds to the awesomeness of it. I feel very satisfied with the ending. I am very excited there will be more books about this world and I will be first in line to read them. If you have not read the first two books in this series, you could probably get away with reading this in isolation, but I would not recommend it. Book one is currently free as an ebook on Amazon, so I would start there. This is an 18 plus read.