3.5 Stars
It is alternating first person POV between the two main characters. While the reader spends more time in Lily’s head than in Tharin’s, I did appreciate getting to have an idea of what Tharin was thinking as his times of extreme jerkiness.
The story line for this book was great. Lily is living with her foster mother, Marilyn. It is two days past her eighteenth birthday and she decides to go for a run. She is attacked on her run by none other than her brother, Lucas, who has been missing for four years. Enter Tharin, Ceesa, and Tolan. Ceese is a giant black panther, she is bound to Tharin and I loved her immediately. Tolan and Tharin are twins…and elves! (I love a story about elves). And Tharin is the prince and guess what? Lily is his betrothed. But worst of all is that Tharin can’t stand Lily and he is mean and bossy, but he is the only way Lily can think to find Lucas. She is convinced he didn’t mean to hurt her and Tolan and Tharin are convinced that he did. Agree to disagree. The rest of the book is the journey that Lily makes back to Tharin’s world. She insists that her friend Julia come along and as much as Tharin doesn’t like Lily, it appears that Tolan really can’t stand Julia. I think my favorite scene was when Lily tells Tharin that she knows about Kalis and she won’t marry someone who loves someone else. Bravo girl! We also meet Tharin and Tolan’s cousins, Alorn, Meelis, and Phoris. I loved those three as well. We meet other characters along the way and they are all great, good, bad and ugly this author has a way with building great supporting characters.
Now to get on with what she doesn’t have a way with…editing. I am sure that there are many people who can read right past grammatical errors, but I am not one of them. They pull me out of the story faster than anything else.
The worst thing about this book was the editing! It drove me insane. At one point the author said that a character had done a “complete three-eighty”. There is no such thing as a three-eighty…unless you are in math class which means your line would take you twenty degrees past where you started after doing a complete circle. The correct term would be a “complete one-eighty” meaning the person has completely changed from who they were. The author consistently wrote “worst” when she mean “worse” and “pass” when she meant “past”. I know it is probably difficult for a new author to ask a friend to read their work before self publishing, but it would have been worth it.
Now, will I read the second one? Not at this point. I absolutely loved the ending of this with Lily and Ziri, but from the summary I read of the second book, it sounds like a lot of misunderstandings that are perpetrated by the “I know she doesn’t understand what is happening but I will tell her later” situation. Also the summary says that Tharin is going to keep Kalis close to him. I absolutely hate, hate, hate love triangles! I don’t want to read about how Lily is hurt because Tharin is spending time with Kalis. Pah! If it wasn’t for that, I would have read it, although I read a review that said that the second book had an equal number of typos, I would have persevered just because I love these characters. Maybe I will jump in with the third book.
Favorite quote: Tolan talking about Julia…
“How can anyone sleep with this thunderous moose snoring on my chest,” he replies laughing gently.”
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