Review: review of as the last petal falls
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 2, 2013
I really liked the essence of the story which had parts of the Beauty and Beast fairy tale in it.  The spirited but beautiful heroine Vivienne gets lost in the mountains breaks her arm and runs across wolves that want to eat her but is saved by the cantankerous beast of a man the hero Fain.  Even though I had a hard time picturing what Fain would look like in my mind and it is more his attitude that makes him a beast then his looks alone it would seem.  Vivienne was fairly easy to imagine and several times Fain would refer to her as Belle.  Both characters seem to hold quite a grudge and have lots of secrets not only to each other but also to us the readers.  Despite their personal issues both characters are very well-developed.  As the story progresses Fain and Vivienne’s attraction and relationship is slow going and has time to develop which I appreciated in the story as opposed to them instantly getting together.As the story progressed it did start to get bizarre though.  When Vivienne goes to warn Fain I didn’t mind the element of magic which made for an interesting plot twist, the use of magic mushrooms adding lots of humor to the story, Vivienne being able to communicate with the wolves or fairies interfering and helping Vivienne but the talking fox was really not needed and I couldn’t understand his purpose in the story?  I also think the ending happened to abruptly and should have at least had more of an ending then just them getting married did they live happily ever after or what; did Vivienne’s father ever accept Fain as opposed to just putting in the epilogue and teaser for the next book.  In all this mentioned above I could only rate the book four stars.  I still would read another book from Ms. Jessica Woodard.