Review: A Touch of Darkness by Tina Moss and Yelena Casale
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2014
Although the synopsis does have to do with the book it is almost misleading as the events highlighted, in most cases, are so underplayed that they are virtually non-existent during the course of the book.The Good: An interesting concept based on the synopsis. Yep, I've used that "concept" line before but I truly mean it no matter how many times I say it when speaking about books. The synopsis pulled me in. I was intrigued by why Cassie's hands would glow purple and what exactly she was, if not human. The authors had some good ideas.The Bad: The execution of the ideas could have been written better. The world building only appears to be halfway complete and the characters are poorly drawn. For example our *ahem* hero, Gabe, mentions that he and another "Fallen", Rafe, are bitter rivals yet the reasoning was never mentioned. In addition, the reason Gabe "Fell" was never covered even though he constantly talked about working toward his redemption. The addition of some over the top violence in the last half of the book that was completely absent in the first half made the sections a bit disjointed as if one author wrote the first half and the other wrote the last. Plus one torture scene appears to have been added just for shock factor. Gabe is tortured by the bad guys for information on Cassie. Yet the bad guys already HAD Cassie. Why they would have to torture him when they had her is beyond me. The lack of real romance within the book makes the H/h's devotion to one another towards the end of the book seem entirely out of place and a bit weird. And finally (not that this is the end of the issues but the end of what I'd consider "The Bad") the character's had an annoying habit of talking to themselves. Meaning, a book written in the third person narrative would utilize inner musings where we, the readers, would be able to see what they were thinking. This book had those thoughts spoken out loud as if the characters were in some weird soap opera.The Ugly: These are more personal issues I have and might not be something another reader might find to be worse than those mentioned above. However, for me, they are deal breakers.....1)What looked like an interesting idea for a book based on the synopsis proved to be nothing more than an Angels against Demons trope. Been there. Done that. Cassie's "abilities" are so under explained that they barely had any significance within the story to make this book an original. 2)Basic editing errors are more than annoying. Any editor, no matter how seasoned, should have picked up the usage of "peak" instead of "peek" and "dear" instead of "deer". 3) Cassie was TSTL. She has demons trying to capture her and the Angels want her dead. So what does our *ahem* heroine do? She decides she is her own woman and purposely heads out to the Las Vegas strip on her own, without the man who has sworn to protect her from harm, just because she could. Ugh.In A Nutshell: Unfortunately, this book has way too many issues for this to be a truly enjoyable read. For this reason I will not continue on with the series even though this is only the first book in what will be a series.1.5 Stars rounded up to 2(I received this ebook for my honest review from the publisher via NetGalley)