Review: Erin was an immature and inconsistent heroine; what we're told is not what we're shown
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 08 14, 2011
It is very rare that I don't finish a book and while it is no longer impossible for me to do, it is still very difficult. I have no doubt that one of the reasons I was able to make this a DNF read was because I had recently read its prequel and many of the problems I had with this book I had also had with that one. While I did make myself finish DESTINY DIVIDED, Book 1 in the Shadows of Destiny series, I accepted halfway through DESTINY UNITED that this series and its heroines are obviously not for me and there was no point in my continuing.HEROINE, Erin / Aila (21):DESTINY UNITED is about Erin / Aila Bolton, the younger (foster) sister of Sage Peterson, the heroine in DESTINY DIVIDED. Erin is setup as being the opposite of Sage personality-wise, however what she is supposed to be according to descriptions of her (what we're told) and how she actually is (what we're shown) are two very, very different things. Erin As She's Told is a timid nice-girl with an anxiety disorder and a reliance on alcohol to cope with her illness. She suffers from panic attacks when she has to go into a new place and/or be around people whom she does not know. She does not trust easily because of her unstable upbringing, and a traumatic event in her youth made her even more distrustful of men in particular. She is smart, nice, well-behaved, and always wanting to please people. You get the idea, right?Now, let's compare her with Erin As She's Shown. This Erin initially gets nervous going alone into a bar filled with people, she does it and manages to be calm enough to flirt with a group of guys so that she can get them to buy her drinks. Other than that, we're not shown any addiction-battling or proof of this supposed dependence. Erin's anxiety disorder is also not consistent, at times crippling, at other times nonexistent. She makes sure to always have a boyfriend, because with her avoidance of new and/or crowded places, it's convenient to have a guy who will shop and pay for her things. Erin describes herself as being too nice and accepting, which makes everyone treat her like a doormat; I never saw evidence to support either of these statements. She whines frequently and acts immaturely.Erin also does what I absolutely hate that characters sometimes do: rebelling for rebellion's sake. Marcelo is sent to protect her because there are sorcerers and werewolves who want to kidnap or kill her, yet she continuously tries to make a stand, put her foot down, show she's independent, and not listen to Marcelo because she can take care of herself (despite all evidence to the contrary). Despite the fact that she knows nothing about the supernatural world, or that she cannot fight, cast spells, and does not have powers. At one point they run into three sorcerers who try and harm them, and Erin is upset that Marcelo has killed them and wants to call an ambulance. They just tried to kill you, sweetheart! That's not being softhearted (as Marcelo sickeningly sweetly sees it), it's being stupid - as is her continued wilfulness towards him.HERO, Marcelo (800+):While I liked Marcelo, I could not buy the developing relationship between them. That he lusts for her, sure; we hear enough about her hot little body for that part of their connection to be completely believable. However, he's an 800+ year old vampire, and something that I've come to realize really annoys me in vampire romance books is when a very old vampire does not seem to mind having a romantic / sexual relationship with a 20-year-old who acts about half her age. Even if physically they're well-matched, mentally and emotionally he is hundreds of years older than her - I mean talk about cradle-robbing! She acts like a willful child with him - albeit a child with apparently nice breasts and butt - so why is he so profoundly affected by her? Why has he decided within the space of a few days (out of the ~300,000 days he's had) that she is his mate and that he can give up the quest to find his human wife (who was also turned) that he's been on for more than 800 years?!STORY:Other than Erin's personality, I also had issues with the pace and flow of the story and how in the first half she and Marcelo seem so disconnected from the rest of the sup world. We abruptly and jarringly are told the entire history of Erin's other "persona" (Aila) when Marcelo comes back from looking on the internet while she was passed out post-transformation. He tells her (and the reader) this entire back story that we were not even given hints to, as if he came across it in a Google search result or on Wikisupspedia. Also, the reader isn't told for quite awhile about the battles and power struggles between the different supernatural species or the events with Sage that precipitated all this, making it unclear at the beginning to the reader as to exactly why Erin is being pursued.PORTRAYAL OF ALCOHOLISM & ANXIETY DISORDER:Finally, I was dissatisfied with how Erin's anxiety disorder and alcoholism were woven into the story. It seemed at times that the author forgot that part of her character's history, then remembering it all of a sudden and throwing in a scene in which she is about to have a panic attack or has an urge to go to the bar nearby. I really disliked the times when her anxiety disorder and the pills she takes to combat it are depicted as being weaknesses. Marcelo alludes to this several times, however it wasn't used as a character development component in which Marcelo overcomes his ignorance about mental illness; instead, the manner in which these parts are written makes it seem as if these statements are indeed true and the character development they relate to is Erin overcoming her disorder by making herself do so. This plays right into one of the most frequent myths / misunderstandings about mental illness: that a person can just snap out of it, if they really want to. Believe me, if it were that unbelievably easy, I don't know of any person with a mental illness who would not do it.* This review is of a copy provided by the author to Fiction Vixen Book Reviews. Review originally posted on the Fiction Vixen website.