DNF at 77% that is 22 of 26 Chapters, and I’m dnfing this due to getting more and more frustrated and annoyed with it.
To start with, I know I am new to diving into the world of Romance books, but I feel like its not wrong for me to want more for the overall storytelling. This had no plot, the world building was mediocre and the character building was non-existent.
Lazarus and Eve had ZERO chemistry, and this is due to the fact that for 50% of this book they pretty much do not talk to each other. Sure they end up in the same room numerous times but they spend 90% of that time internally monologueing about the other. Lazarus being like “oh I don’t deserve her because of my past” and Eve being like “oh he is so big and scary I don’t want to make him angry”.
Eve is a doormat, and I’m not sorry for saying that, she has no backbone at all and the 2 times she tries it just fails to come across as strong. She literally spends majority of this book telling herself how big and scary Lazarus is and how she doesn’t want to upset him. She also spends the entire book being locked in a room, and not taking part in any of the overall story. She doesn’t go and help fight she has two training sessions that last like a few paragraphs each. Lets also not forget how she spends a few chapters being knocked out, that takes the story another 10 chapters to explain why (her injury still makes no sense at all). She is absolutely pointless in the story until 60% in and her use then dwindles down to being something Lazarus can have sex with to control his inner demon. She serves no purpose other than being a sexual object and this was final driving point for making me dnf this.
Lazarus on the other hand is absolutely annoying, he constantly drones on about how he doesn’t deserve a mate because of his tragic past with causing his brother to lose his mate. Just pages and pages of the same inner monologue being repeated endlessly over and over and over again. A good chunk of this book could have been edited out due to the constant repeating of the same information being given. Other than that he has no personality.
What about the action? That’s non-existent as well. EVERYTIME I thought we where going to get see Lazarus in action and do some fighting, it didn’t happen, instead we got moments like “oh no we couldn’t find them guess i’ll go home and work out now” or ” ah we fought them and won” proceeds to not show us any of said action. I think the most we got was seeing him kick someone in the chest and one of the brothers throwing an axe at a demon. There is so much lore put on them being these amazing fighters who take out demons, but we never get to see it, at one point they come upon 2 demons only for these demons to kill themselves, like really??!?!?! So unsatisfying.
Plot, I don’t know what that is, because the only plot that existed in this was trying to get the couple to get to the sex parts, and that just doesn’t do anything for me. Its like Gray was trying to add an overarching story that would be the center of how they come together, but it didn’t work. We get haphazard attempts at building a plot with one of the brothers having fallen to his inner demon and going after the others to destroy their lives, but most of it takes place off page, or its a quick 2 page conversation and then its right back to Lazarus and Eve fighting their mate pull to each other. It would have been really nice to actually see the potential war actually coming to fruition but it didn’t. Also some of the brothers started losing their minds and kept trying to kill Eve, this piece of the plot goes no where and I don’t understand why it even happened.
Now one of my biggest issues (aside from everything I have stated) what is the obsession with the words FEMALE and MALE. I don’t know how many times I was pulled out of this story because Lazarus kept referring to Eve as Female, we couldn’t use Woman??? I’m going to give an example of a passage that pissed me off so bad.
“And you’re my…my warrior?” Hearing her say those words nearly had him undone. The cabin lights were low for the night flight and highlighted the shadows beneath Eve’s eyes. She looked fragile. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his lap and convince her everything would be all right. But he couldn’t, because it wouldn’t. “Yes, and you are my female.”
REALLY!!! She gets to call him “Her Warrior” and she in return gets to be called “his FEMALE” like Gray couldn’t have had her called “his LIGHT” since he is always going on about how she stops him from succumbing to his inner demon. Gray could have used anything, but she went with this, and I literally set my kindle down and walked away, if I was reading a physical version I would have thrown it out of anger, but I didn’t want to break my kindle.
“Eve, but you really are an attractive female.”
Because apparently saying woman would have been way to difficult.
I used my handy search feature in the kindle and the word FEMALE is used 73 times, and Male is used 57 times. Apparently using words like Woman, man, men, women was just not in the plan for this. And I’m sorry but the over use of Female and Male was just a serious mood killer. There is a time and place to use them and majority of the time they where used in this was just wrong ( in my opinion)
This is where my journey with this series ends, I couldn’t finish this and it doesn’t entice me at all to go any further in the series.
Intotheheartwyld 