I was soooooo excited to get this book in the mail. I love Heather Burch's writing voice and I started reading Guardian the minute I got it.

Thing is, I got annoyed when I started it. The book had enough action to keep me reading, but it was mainly all about the love triangle between Mace, Nikki and Raven. I don't mind romance, but I did get a bit irritated with Nikki after awhile. She was selfish and a bit ...dumb.

She got herself into dangerous situations and the boys had to rescue her. She cried and spent alot of time moping about Mace and Raven.



Um hello? I'm not anti-males-saving-the-day, but GIRL! Pick yourself up and deal with your problems! Forget that Abercrombie good looking halflings exist and focus on finding the answer to your problems!! Seesh.

Unlike *cough* certain books every single side character had their own personality. I LOVED Zero, Vine, Winter, and Will. The author did such an awesome job with them. She had me laughing at Zero's antics, just wanting to love on Vine because he is so stinken adorable, begging to find out more of Winter's backstory (I have a feeling she will be pretty important in the third book) and Will? Will is just plain awesome.

I hated that Zero, Vine, and all the other characters (that had SOOOOO much potential) were pushed to the side so Nikki could take turns playing with the hearts of Mace/Raven and make out with them every fifteen pages.



Yeah. I don't know what happened either. Guardian had some awesome lines, description, writing style, and scenes, but for the first half of the book I kept turning the pages and wanting to knock some sense into Nikki.



She didn't even grieve over her parents until around page 209? She sobbed over two boys instead? Come on.



Alot of people have said that they hated Raven's immaturity, but I could relate to him the most. He was human. He didn't try to be perfect. He made mistakes, he was a jerk, and he hurt Nikki, yet somehow I still connected with him and I wanted to hug him.





Maybe because I really am a great big softie after all who loves that anti-hero type characters...but.....I thought he was awesome. So broken, so raw and while a bit stupid at times, I still wanted to hug, hug, hug him. (view spoiler)[When Raven left halfway through the book...afgadgfhafkgljadhfglkjafdhg.....so many feels! I like Nikki and Raven together. He understands her. Mace/Nikki? Wayyy too perfect. (hide spoiler)]

Every girl seems to fall for Mace, but for some weird reason I just didn't fall for him. Maybe because I was in a glass case of emotion after I read Raven's POV....but...I still couldn't bring myself to love Mace. He was just Mr. Wonderful 24/7. I cannot help it that I find the perfect characters boring. I like the people who are broken. Raven? Completely broken. Therefore I cannot help loving him.

(view spoiler)[And the smaller plot twist with Nikki running away? (hide spoiler)] That was awesome. I loved that Heather broke Nikki and tossed her around. It was good for her character and by page 222 I started to like her again since she wasn't thinking about whether Mace or Raven was hotter. xD

Then the author threw in the epic, epic, plot twist that I thought was well thought out. I was NOT expecting it at all so I danced because 1. it was epic and I always scream and shout when something epic happens and 2. no more love triangle for a few pages!! The ending was pretty epic.



Heather Burch is an awesome writer and the Haflings idea is simply brilliant. I just wish Nikki had put away her permanent case of-I-can't-live-without-them-syndrome and grown a backbone before the 200th page. Oh well. What's done is done and the book wasn't any worse because of it. In fact it ended on a really promising note! I'm fully expecting the next book to be action packed.

Guardian was an easy read that romance lovers will adore. Parts of it just weren't for me though, but I enjoyed it overall. People who like the first Haflings book, paranormal romance or Twilight will really like this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Zondervan, who provided me with an ARC for review purposes.