Review: Mixed Feelings
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 21, 2014
Extremely addicting storyline kept me hooked till the last page. I immediately went and bought the second in the series which I'm currently reading. It's like Harry Potter meets Vampire Academy- both of which I love- and a little shifter added in. I laughed, I cried, and a read like a mad woman.With that being said- this book is frustrating for multiple reasons. From page one you are dropped into a whole lotta story & action and you can't ignore the feeling that this easily could have been the second book in a series (not the first). SO much has happened to lead up to the first chapter and frankly I don't understand WHY the back story is not its own book. I would have really enjoyed reading about the events leading up to this one. You limp along for the first quarter of the book- eventually getting some of the information that makes the storyline make more sense.I'm also not sure I enjoy the authors pacing. Book one covers an extremely large amount of time and that stretch of time is broken up into these tiny little snippets of action.  A ton of emphasis is put on the building of a friendship/partnership between the four main characters which is great. Their deep friendships are the best thing about the entire book. But I feel like too much needed information is left out like the history of this world, it's past wars, the identity of potential enemies, and even the backstory of the characters themselves. We're just kind of dropped these big bombs of information and because of that they come across as random.My last gripe has nothing to do with the writing per say but more with this recent increase in new adult category books. I get that some authors don't want to focus on s-e-x. For whatever reason, they don't want to get down into the nitty gritty of the act itself so instead the romance part of the story it kept light and fluffy and any physical acts are glossed over. I get that. What I don't get is when a book like this one is SO INCREDIBLY SEXUALLY CHARGED and yet physical acts are completely ignored. A huge portion of this book involves sex. The characters talk about all of their sexual exploits, bed partners, and each others sexual anatomy and yet when it comes down to the act itself things are glossed over. That was frustrating for me.This could have been a five star review. But the strange things with the storyline make it more like 4. I'm really really hoping things develop more in the second book because I'm completely on board with this series.