Review: disappointing
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 1, 2012
I was so looking forward to reading this book. The title, synopsis and cover pulled me in from the get go, as I LOVE all things Gypsy. I love books about them and in particular the dancing. I just knew I was going to be swept away by this book and find a new favorite Gypsy novel to add to my collection. Unfortunately, that just was not the case with this book.Oralia is a young, innocent Gypsy girl who is about to get engaged. To who, she will not know until the end of a traditional matching ceremony in which the eligible ladies dance and then their parents announce who they have chosen to marry their daughter. Oralia is nervous because she is not ready and wants to marry for love. Her parents talk her into it, citing their own arranged marriage and eventual love, giving her hope that something good can come out of her own arrangement. Unfortunately her groom-to-be, Tobias is a chauvinist jackass who wants his wife to be a chef and full time babymaker. He tries a little black magic on her to ensure her cooperation, after which a third man enters the picture. Niko is a Hunter who arrests people for using black magic. His target is Tobias, and of course Oralia gets caught in the crossfire. He and Oralia fall instantly in love and marry, like, the next day and band together to trap Tobias.Now, sounds like a pretty good setup right? If you can get past the instant love between hero and heroine, it seems like this would be an amazing story. I am sad to say that all the right elements were there, but the execution just wasn't there. Here are the major problems I had with this story:1. I was really hoping for more insight into the culture of the Gypsies. I was happy when the book began with the matching ceremony and the descriptions of garb worn. Eventually, though, those things were tossed to the wayside in favor of the romance, which disappointed me. I'm one of those people who hopes authors won't sacrifice the story for the romance or the romance for the story. I was hoping for a nice blend of both, but really there was none past the ceremony. There was no explanation as to why an arranged marriage would take place in this day and age (this is a Contemporary story), or any hint as to the everyday life in the Gypsy village. Because of this, the setting of the novel suffered tremendously.2. The back story was not explained well enough. Niko is a Hunter and all that is told about hunters is that they all have white hair, can teleport at will, and live in a separate realm from the Gypsies. Oh, and they hunt people who use black magic. That's about it. No explanation as to how this race came to be, or even what they do with the users of black magic once they are arrested. Again, this disappointed me because the concept intrigued me from the beginning, as did Niko's characters. I was hoping to go deeper into some of these concepts, but we never really scratched the surface. Which leads me to another problem I had with this story: character development. It's pretty much nonexistent.3. Oralia is presented as a wide-eyed innocent, and while this often works in some stories, in this one it did not. Oralia was annoying, and was presented several times as a weepy mess who fell into a bout of tears an any given provocation. Oh, but of course when she meets Niko, the shyness is out the window. On her wedding night (she is a virgin), she suddenly turns into a bold sex kitten who is amazingly able to go all night with her randy husband without mention of any soreness, pain, or discomfort. In a way, Oralia was like two people: the crying innocent girl, and the sex kitten. The combination just didn't work because she never moved beyond that point. She never developed and she never changed. Neither did Niko. As a hero he was flat and boring and seemed to only love Oralia for her beauty. There was never any deep or meaningful interaction between them that led me to believe it was about more than the fact that they were both beautiful and attracted to each other.4. Story Progression. There was none. I found this to be the most frustrating aspect of all because this book is loooong, and barely anything happens. I believe and editor should have/could have cut out about 30% of this book. I got tired of every time Oralia and Niko got together with their family members, I had to read a rundown of what every single person is wearing to the last detail. The details were not given in an imaginative way either. Paragraphs full of "Ella was wearing....and Sebastien was wearing...." really grated on my nerves after awhile. There were about 4 scenes describing in detail Oralia shopping with her mother an sister in law (which, by the way is all these women do. Shop and codddle their Hunter husbands), and not one of those scenes had any bearing on the story whatsoever. There were also several points where the characters were having conversations recapping things I had already read. I am talking about pages upon pages of a person telling another person something that already happened in detail. It was almost as if the author was saying, "Hey reader, in case you weren't paying attention....". I skipped so many pages reading this book, it isn't even funny. All because fat that could have been trimmed.The actual intrigue of the story ends about halfway through and then pops back up at almost 90 %. The rest is just filler. And the conclusion of the conflict with Tobias was watered down and mediocre. The one part of the story that had true potential never got its chance to truly shine. Even the sex scenes (the most well written parts of the book) became superflous. There were at lest 4 too many. I like a good sensual scene as well as the next girl, but only when it has some bearing on the story. Most of the time it was distracting and there were so many of them (and not very much variety from scene to scene) that I got bored and started skimming over those too.All in all, I was really let down by this story. It had a lot of potential but never quite made it off the ground for me. A shame too, because the author clearly has talent, although I'd recommend and editor with sharper eyes who is brave enough to point these things out without fear of hurting the author's feelings.I was supplied with a copy of this book by the author in exchange for my honest review.