Review: Book Review: From Author Unpublished
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2014
I received a copy of this book as part of the Fated Mates Box Set directly from the publisher/author in exchange for an honest review.I wasn't a big fan of this particular book. It didn’t start off too bad; the writing was reasonably clear. Unfortunately, it was frequently punctuated with misspelled words and jumbled sentences. Examples:He’d warned me that I couldn’t run from him forever, but catching me when running was impossible shocked me, never imagined he would do such a thing.Yes, wolves made for life.IK still felt conflicted and afraid.None of the nitwits in Denton’s pack would ever think of turning someone against your will.So would I would no longer have any ties to my old life.Grammar and spelling aside, the overall narrative felt terribly rushed to me. The chapters were short and the events in the book sped by one after another with very little time in between. The dialogue was overly dramatic and even clichéd at times. (I face palmed when Gabe told another character to pick on someone his own size.)The romance in particular felt forced. Chloe started off the book with two male interests (one of which being Gabe, the main male lead) and at first she seemed to be really off put by this guy… but within a couple chapters (without so much as a chaste kiss!) she was declaring her love for him. He had barely talked to her, hadn’t really done anything for her or with her, and suddenly she was all over him. Their first kiss and the ONLY bit of sex in this book was right at the very end of the book. I just couldn’t believe what I was being told about these two. To make things even odder, the other male interest completely disappeared from the book. I literally have no idea what happened to him – he just started to ignore her at one point (for no obvious reason, even the other characters commented on it), and was never mentioned again.SPOILERS -The same can be said of the major plot points. The story seemed to jump from one conclusion to another without any supporting narrative. At one point, Chloe is being followed around by Mitch, an average, if creepy, guy. She makes mention that he smells like peppermint.  A chapter later she’s calling him her attacker… but at no point was it ever explained how she came to the conclusion that Mitch was one and the same with the werewolf that attacked her. There’s absolutely no evidence to link the two, and she never came up with this conclusion “on screen”. END SPOILERSThere were a lot of plot points that were also brought up, but were either inconsistent, or glossed over. Chloe’s parents were brought up, but by the end of the book, nothing had been solved. She didn’t meet them again. Her abuse as a child was mentioned only once, near the end of the book, and by that point struck me as false. Her actions throughout the book did not lead me to believe that she had any sort of sexual trauma as a child—I don’t think the author researched how this sort of abuse would change a person’s behavior as an adult. Chloe flaunted her one-night stands and sexual promiscuity without a thought… hard to believe of someone who was abused in the manner the author described. I just couldn’t believe it. The same can be said about the info of how her mother treated her as a kid. It was mentioned only once, at the end of the book almost as an afterthought. I saw no evidence of how Chloe’s childhood had any impact on her behavior or life up until that point, and what I was being told didn’t mesh with what I knew of her character by that point. The story lacked consistency.As far as the characters are concerned, I honestly disliked Chloe. She started the book as a very, well, loosely moraled woman. She mentions her many one-night stands, her constant penchant for getting drunk, and at one point, even says she has no problem trading sexual favors for things. Once she started talking about how hitchhiking was a fairly safe and valid form of transportation, I began to wonder if she was a prostitute. She also seemed to have a penchant for putting herself in harm’s way—including running back to the bar where she knows Mitch is, even though he creeps her out, and getting herself needlessly wasted. Outside of that,  (like most of the characters) by mid-way in the book, her personality had completely changed. She seemed to be primarily reactionary to the story, but had little personality beyond that. Generally speaking, most of the characters seemed one-dimensional at best, and maybe even a bit flakey. Their reactions to events were over-dramatic and nonsensical to the point of absurdity. I really wish the author had spent more time filling out the plot and the characters and given them more time to develop.Overall, by the end of this book I was flabbergasted by the errors, missing information, clichés, and ridiculously fast narrative. I simply couldn’t enjoy the story because the narrative was so juvenile in the way it was rushed and over-dramatic, that I just kept shaking my head at it. Would I read this again? No. Would I recommend it? Honestly? No. I wouldn’t. I’m sure there are people out there that could enjoy this story, but it was in need of a good editor, and I simply couldn’t force myself to suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy the story.