Review: Decent series
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 16, 2013
I've now read all of the books in this series. What I first want to say applies to all of the books in the series. I had to go to the author's website to try and figure out the best order to read them in. In the end, I went with chronological order: Bonded, The Mating, The Keeping, Betrayed, then The Finding. Overall, I think the stories were interesting. Clearly, if I didn't like them I wouldn't have continued to read the entire series. I was prompted to read them in the first place because of the good reviews and the price (can't beat FREE)! However, I can only give them 3 stars because they were so overly redundant I found myself skipping over a great deal and wanting to get straight to the point. I think they could have each been shortened by 30+ pages without losing anything of value. Many things were unnecessarily repeated and actually took away from the plot development. The author did a good job developing her characters and the storyline, so there was no need to repeat things over and over again. I'm thinking specifically of how she may have told a story about something that happened in a character's past multiple times throughout the text. If you told it once, you can just reference it or put a one liner in that will prompt the reader to remember. I felt she didn't give the readers enough credit to put things together or their own or connect the dots. Everything was explained in great detail too many times and some of the stories felt dragged out. Still, I was drawn into the stories and connected with the characters (hence the 3 stars). As other reviewers have said, these books are available free elsewhere if Amazon is charging for them!With that being said, Bonded was probably by favorite book in the series. I really liked the characters, Brandi and Reno, and loved the way their relationship developed. This was also a great introduction to their lycan world. It was a nice refreshing twist on a common theme. I was especially excited to see these characters return later on in the series. Although the "romance" part may be lacking for some, I thought it was well done. It wasn't your typical love hate relationship, but it went well with the overall story and everything else that was going on in the character's lives. This book may have explained a lot about the werewolves and how they operate, but as the first book in a series that should be expected.