I am not even really sure where to begin. There was so much I liked about this book. While I am going to try really hard not to give any spoilers that will impact your enjoyment of this story, I can not guarantee that I will not inadvertently over share. I apologize in advance, if I do. This is the first book in a trilogy about a woman who discovers she is a witch, as she is helping to bring down an evil organization. I know this sounds like many witch story arcs, but this story is anything, but typical. It incorporates familiar lore with new lore, making for very interesting characters and plot twists.
I'll tell you what I liked about it:
* Devan is a character I could easily relate to and care about. She is strong, yet vulnerable. She cares about others and often puts their needs before her own, but is never a door mat. While she is struggling with a horrid past, she uses it not as a weakness, but as the strength she needs to move forward and make things right.
* This book has witches, vampires, a faery-witch, a shaman, dhampirs, and a sheoque.
*I love that the characters are in their mid-thirties (or older - hundreds of years old ;0)). So many of books in this genre have young adult aged characters and I loved having characters closer to my age.
* You finish the story feeling like the story is complete, yet wanting more. There is no "I can not believe the author ended this here and now I have to wait months/a year to find out the end of the story" angst.
*Neither the love story nor the mystery/adventure overshadowed the other. It is a nice blend making this a good book for people who love romance as well as those loving the suspense of a good vs evil conflict.
*The bending in this book (this may be spoilerish) is the bending of time and the author somehow avoided most all of the things that usually irk me about this sort of thing. I am an uber geek about time distortions of any kind, so this made me happy.
*Laugh if you will, but this book gave me a brilliant recipe idea I can not wait to try and a fun desserty sandwich to make at home. The recipe they used was basically a grilled fluffernutter (so yummy). My brilliant (possibly brilliant, possibly yuck, but I am thinking optimistically)is a nutella/fluff sandwich grilled. If you try it before I get to the store for nutella, please let me know how it is.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next two books in this series. I am thinking it will have more Vamps (since it is bite) and I do love vamps. I think I know what shift will be about, but I will wait until number two gets out so I do not look foolish by jumping to conclusions ;). I will say, for the record, I do not believe it will be were related. Those of you who know me, probably realize I can not wait to find out and I will probably pester the author about my idea within minutes of posting this hehehe.
This is not a YA book and I would recommend it for people 18 and older. The violence is not too dark, but there are scenes of adult fun not geared towards a younger audience.
I received this as an arc, so I can not comment on the formatting or proof reading of the final product. I use a kindle and the formatting seemed really strong. There were some editing errors, but they were not distracting to me (the nerd) and may have been fixed before the final product was released.