ACE
Urban Fantasy
Mass Market Paperback
Reviewed by Dawn (love2read28@gmail.com)
Obtained by Publisher
2.5
Hearts
Miranda
Grey has quickly come to terms with becoming a vampire and marrying the Prime
of the South, David Solo. Three months have passed and she is quickly learning
her way around and how to navigate the often times treacherous world of
politics. What she doesn’t realize is that David has secrets and one secret is
about to destroy her world around her if she is not careful. What happens when
a struggling relationship finds itself under attack, allies and friends dying
and more secrets you can shake a stick at….cracks appear and Miranda has to
figure out- leave David or fight till the very last breath-for her, for David
and for their relationship.
First
off, I enjoyed book one, Queen of Shadows, immensely. But for the life
of me, I could not get into SHADOWFLAME for a variety of reasons. The
first being the way David is portrayed. He is like a person who can’t make up
his mind. One minute all determined, next secretive and angry. Then add in
cheating by him and you lose me completely. With so many sub-plots running
around, I never know who was doing what and there was no main storyline to
follow or if there was, so little of it, it felt overshadowed by whatever the
secondary characters were doing instead. Basically it was like a free for all
and the author just threw things in the story willy-nilly.
Add
feeling that Miranda was just a cliff note as the story progressed, I was shaking
my head going, ‘poor, poor child, you need a dose of wake up and smell the
coffee’ after taking David back after his cheating and the announcement he
gives her just floors me completely. I am sorry but to tell your new
partner/pair you will love another just makes me want to toss the book and
yell, ‘grow a spine, Miranda’. I have a feeling the author was tossing as much
as she could in here and letting things lay where they fell. The first book had
David and Miranda strong characters and in this follow-up book, both were a
mess, literally and figuratively. Neither appealed to me and frankly, I was at
a loss at how they came to this in SHADOWFLAME.
SHADOWFLAME is one of those
books you either love it or hate it. I, for one, just couldn’t handle the many
sub-plots, secrets that made no sense or characters that did a 360 personality
wise. The pace of the book was too fast. It felt like the story had bullet
points on an outline to check off. Okay check off the following: Cheating.
Danger. Love. Forgiveness. Near death experiences. I mean, really, I love a
fast pace book but with a storyline that matched it perfectly. SHADOWFLAME
was not that kind of book in my opinion. There was no build up to the ending, I
struggled trying to sort out everything being thrown at me, characters
reactions to some scenes left a bad taste in my mouth and scratching my head in
confusion with all the telling and no showing aspect of the story. For whatever
reason, Ms. Sylvan tries to toss a lot of back-story in SHADOWFLAME and
if done right, works like a charm but it just falls flat here. I am hoping this
author does better on future books in the series.
This
is an objective review and not an endorsement
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