Review: Don't give up on this book!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2013
It really, really, scares me how close I came to putting down this book around Chapter Three and never finishing it. I ended up forcing myself to keep reading, and thank goodness for that!I'll start with the things I really liked about this book. Nicole MacDonald has created a very detailed and interesting fantasy world, and then made it even better by adding likeable and engaging characters to it. The story centers around four best friends who cast a spell looking for their soul mates, and they end up being transported to a new world. Here they meet four men who literally swoop in and save them from death. With a cast of otherworldly people and creatures to delve into, MacDonald can seemingly keep you entertained indefinitely with new things. However, at first, the large cast of main characters is a little overwhelming to keep up with. Even at the very end of the story, I was still a little sketchy on who goes where, but the story is still very enjoyable despite that fact.I also enjoyed several aspects of the plot. There is a good romance story going - on several different fronts. There is magic, a battle between good and evil, and four women who are dropped into a world that they must learn to navigate quickly (as in life-or-death quickly). I absolutely love, love, love the Griffons. As one/half of the human/Griffon duo needed to form the illustrious Griffon Guard, they are essential to the story line, and add just the perfect amount of something special. Audrey, Cat's canine companion, is also a very close second for my affection for inhuman species in this book.Now for what I didn't like. I gather that Nicole MacDonald decided to purposely write this book with alternating POV's. Like, as in eight (or more) different POV's. When I first started reading, I did not know this was intentional. I just assumed it was bad writing. This was the number one reason I nearly tossed this book aside. Even once I did a little bit of research and figured out the shifts were intentional, it still annoyed the heck out of me. This book could have easily been a 5-star favorite of mine, but I am NOT a fan of alternating POV's. It's confusing, disrupts the flow of the story, and kind of leaves me feeling like I'm bobbing along without something anchoring me to the story, or steering me in the right direction. A goodly amount of the story is told from Cat's point of view, and those are the times when I really found myself getting caught up in what was going on. This happens a little later on the book, so it did get easier for me to read.I also was not a big fan of the way the book just abruptly ended. I'm all for a good cliffhanger or a heavy dose of suspense, but this was just ridiculous. It was like running down a familiar path and then finding yourself unexplainably falling off the side of a cliff that you never saw coming (and shouldn't have been there). Thankfully, books two and three in this series are already available, so I can begin reading them immediately. If this would have been book one of a series where I had to wait several months for a sequel, I would have thrown a seriously big hissy fit!Overall, I definitely recommend this book to fans of the fantasy/romance genre. Just be warned that you will probably be supremely irritated at first (and maybe even well into the book) by the shifting POV's, but I guarantee that the story is worth toughing it out.