Review: Had some issues, but overall pretty good
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 23, 2012
3.5-4 stars. The Healing and the Dying is a paranormal/shifter ménage action thriller romance and the sequel to the Given and the Taken. And you should read the first book before hitting this because I think events in the book, the characters, their relationships, and the overall world they live in will make way more sense.Witt's series is set in an alternative now where vampires and werewolves both exist and are known about. For some reason (which I don't think is totally explained), wolves are way more accepted in this world and have way more power, partially because so many of them work in law enforcement and such. Vampires are exotic and sexualized by humans, but seem to get the shaft in general and there doesn't seem to be "human rights" laws between the species to really protect them.(I'm not going to go on about world-building too much since for the few shifter/paranormal/vampire books that I've read, I usually just "go with the flow" and don't question too much unless something is really jarring me out of the story. This might mean that I'm over-forgiving compared to other readers. For the most part, I could go with the flow on Witt's world here.)This sequel follows the continuing flight of Levi, Darius, and Ian as they escape further into Canada, trying to elude the Levi's wolf pack and the authorities in general. Levi is still severely injured from the events that ended book 1, and the three struggle to find a safe haven while also debating whether to ease Levi's current pain by converting him to a vampire, a shift that would heal him faster, but permanently change him physically.I'm not a huge ménage fan, partially because I'm so damn lazy and it sounds like a lot of work to maintain all those relationships equally, but I think Witt handles it well and allows the reader to care about everyone involved. In the first book, she did a good job of building an understandable progression of how the three get together and learn how to depend upon and love each other, and the sequel continues that development, but this time with the added "third wheel" conflict as Darius wonders if he will be abandoned once they're in the clear, and Levi angsts about whether his injuries will endanger the other two.Another thing that I liked is how Witt reinforces connections. In the first book, Ian and Levi had a deep connection with their "mate bond" which near the end of the book had to be severed to protect Ian from the enclosing wolf pack tracking them. Back to the "third wheel" conflict, Levi then felt disconnected from Darius and Ian since the other two shared a bond built on vampire conversion, a connection that allows them to feel and track each other's heartbeats. In this book, Witt reinforces the connections tying the three together, and I appreciate how she is continually interlocking them, one to one, two to one, three together. It's those deepening connections and relationships that is probably my favorite part of the series.The parts that I wasn't crazy about:The angst over whether to convert Levi felt like a third of the book, and that's one of my main quips about this series in general is that the characters over-angst a lot. Admittedly, there is a lot of guilt flying around, and these boys feel really bad about themselves and some of their past choices, which is fine for character growth and development, but at times the angst and mental hand-wringing felt very repetitive and slowed the pace down. (You might have cut a 100 pages from book 1 if you trimmed down the angst and debating about what to do.)A lot of the book is fleeing, which at times felt slow and repetitive also. With that said, two BIG character events happen that changes things, and is probably shifting the story to the final arc (if this is a trilogy) so this isn't a book to skip either. I do think it could have been trimmed down to be a tighter installment, because realistically, not a ton happens to these boys outside of the two big character events.For those who are stressed out readers like me, there isn't a terrible cliffhanger at the end, and you can qualify it as HFN. My guess is that the events in this volume might be shifting everything to a new understanding about wolves, vampires, (and humans.)Even though I had some issues with both these books, I'm still on board for book 3 since I do like the characters, I appreciate how much they care about each other, and I'm interested to see where Witt takes things from here.