Review: The Shapeshifter's Secret by Heather Ostler

Genre

YA Paranormal Romance

Publication Date

June 12th, 2012

Publisher

Cedar Fort

~Sweetwater~

Available At

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Formats

Hardcover
Ebook

                                             

Julia is finally discovering what–not who–she is.


Like any sixteen-year-old, Julia's used to dealing with problems. From her overprotective father to her absent mother to a teacher who definitely has it in for her. But everything changes when Julia's reactions become oddly vicious and angry---more animal than human. This action-packed adventure has it all: humor, romance, and a plot that will keep you guessing to the very last page.


Review
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars


There was plenty of mystery within The Shapeshifter's Secret that fueled my intrigue and kept me interested, but I was just not wholeheartedly invested in the characters.


For one, I felt that the romance aspect was greatly lacking. I felt that the characters both fell in love too simply and this may be due to the fact that they weren't together very often. Plus, the whole time I was reading, I kept getting this feeling that this is only a prelude to the real romance which will take place in future books. I may be completely off base with that assumption, we all know what happens when you assume, right? 


I was not a huge fan of Julia, but she did have great moments. She was completely unrelatable to me and I'm usually a reviewer that can relate to a lot of characters. The big thing that bothered me was Julia's obsession of the evil entity. I just didn't find it natural or normal as she kept trying to find a connection. I'm hoping that this was a process to show Julia's growth and to strengthen her resolve in the books to come. I don't blame her for being curious, but it was just too much for me. 


However, the wheels in my head were in constant motion as little clues were strewn every so often, revealed at perfect moments to keep my interest piqued. The world that Heather Ostler created was beyond fascinating and even though I didn't love the characters, I loved the world and plot enough to be curious about the next book. 

*Received my copy from NetGalley*

Review: Believe by E. Leighanne Grimm-Weever

Thank you to the Goodreads group Shut Up & Read as well as the author for the opportunity to read and review this book

Genre

YA Paranormal Romance

Series

New England Immortals 
(Book 1)

Publication Date

March 2012

Publisher

Self-Published

Available At

Smashwords

Format

Ebook

Andrea Dayla is about to start the next chapter of her life, college, leaving the only familyshe’s ever known behind. It was going to be scary enough being away from home in a strange city but little did she know Hanover had far scarier things in residence; the truth.

For Andrea, vampires were just part of the mythical stories her uncle had told her since as long as she could remember. She didn’t believe they exist until she meets the Brennen’s. Uncle Greg had always painted vampires in a bad light; pure evil more like. Andrea refuses to acknowledge Shane or his family as vile creatures. 
Things were bad enough when she fell in love with Shane, she was mortal but of course it had to get worse. She discovers her family secret, they were immortal vampire hunters. Hunting and killing vampires to protect the humans was who she was, it was what she was made fore. Trouble is that the other part of her is ruled by her love for Shane and his family.
Torn between her love for a vampire and her loyalty to her kind, Andrea will have to make choices that will save a part of herself and destroy others. Too bad that’s not all she has to worry about… She’ll just have to believe!


Review
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars


I've had Believe sitting in my TBR pile for awhile and when I had the opportunity to snatch it up on Shut Up & Read, I did. I was eager to start because what can I say? I'm a sucker for vampires vs. vampire hunters. The ultimate forbidden romance, but I have to admit that I had an extremely hard time getting into the story.


The first half of the story I was just not feeling it at all, so I had to set it aside for awhile and consider if I was going to continue reading or not. I did continue reading, and I can say that the story and the writing did get marginally better, but I still wasn't completely satisfied. 


Believe has a great concept behind it, it's interesting and very complex. . . there's a lot going on with many characters, but that great concept is hidden behind the many, many mistakes.


1. Grammatical errors. There are a lot of misspelled words, missing words, misplaced words, and some formatting issues and other editing errors along those lines. My eyes were constantly stumbling across them and it prevented me from being drawn into the story. One example, Chapter 20 has the first 3 paragraphs in bold text then every other paragraph after that.


2. Inconsistencies. Major downfall for a published work. I can understand one or two that were missed during revisions and editing, but Believe was riddled with them. It was quite frustrating, especially because I'm a details person, so those details stand-out to me and these were blinding me in the eyes. There's tiny inconsistencies and big ones. For example, I'm pretty sure that Shane's eyes are blue, but they were also mentioned as copper and honey then it was mentioned (18% through) that since he's a vampire his eyes change colors. But then, after that information his eyes are only mentioned as blue. Another example, Andrea wakes up at 6:20am for her first day of work, class starts at 7pm that night. She works all day then leaves work to make it to her class, then after class goes back to work and works again. I guess that's not an inconsistency, but isn't it highly unlikely? I mean that would have been a 10+ hour shift to begin with and then add in the other hours that she worked after class. There are other instances like this where it seems the author either forgot previous mentioned information or made it to her convenience to fit the story. The tiny ones have to do with time, placement of objects, name changes (two characters are mentioned with different names, only once each though). Frankly, there are lot and it extremely took away from the story, this was way more bothersome to me than the grammatical errors.


3. Some things are glossed over so if they may be apparent to the writer, they aren't going to be apparent to the reader. A popular example, Andrea begins waiting tables, she has two guys at one table who she refers to as 'ken dolls' (yes because they are rich and attractive, that's another issue that I won't get into. Massive stereotyping.) then she miraculously knows one of them is named Drake. Some reviewers have mentioned this and Grimm-Weever has been kind enough to explain that Andrea has class with him and it was kind of a light-bulb moment when she remembers his name. It doesn't read like that at all and those little moments are scattered throughout the book. I understand this problem, it's one I have issues with myself. It's hard to convey certain thoughts into words, but it should have been apparent with a re-read or the beta reader.


Believe does not read as a final draft, but as a first draft prior to revisions or editing. There is massive potential, but Believe really needs to be cleaned up and looked at again. The plot gets a lot better as you continue to read. I'm under the impression that E. Leighanne Grimm-Weever is in the process of going through each chapter to rectify the spelling mistakes, but those aren't the only issues that need to be fixed, so I hope she's taking time to go through the whole book. To me the inconsistencies are far worse than the grammatical errors, but I really enjoyed the plot, especially the second half of the story.

Review: Shepherd's Moon by Stacy Mantle

I was fortunate to receive this book from the author through a the group Making Connections on Goodreads

Publication Date

October 25th, 2011

Publisher

Self-Published

Available At

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

It's taken twelve years to earn the official title of Shepherd but she's now mostly trained, fairly effective, and the first female in over two centuries to hold the position as protector of animals. All animals. . .


The Territorial Council isn't thrilled with her new title of Shepherd, but they don't have any more control over the appointment than they have over her. All they can really do is wait for her to screw something up - which Alex is determined not to do. Everything changes with a chance encounter with a genetically modified Shifter leaves Alex shaken and initiates a quest to locate its maker.

In a desperate bid to save her pack, Alex must infiltrate the Parallax Corporation - an international organization with their hands in everything from biomedical engineering to publishing. They have now expanded their efforts to include terrorism and are attempting to breed the perfect weapon.

Despite years of training and enough money from her live-in pack of misfits to finance a small country, Alex finds herself woefully unprepared to tackle the new threat. To make matters worse, Alex must work with a mysterious man who's been trying to kill her since the day they met. Together with her pack, Alex must learn how to stop the biological cloning and find those responsible for the plan before it really does become a global threat.

Review
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars


I have to say that I enjoyed the characters along with the plot line, but I found quite a few problems that detracted from my reading experience.

As soon as I started reading Shepherd's Moon I instantly felt as if I missed out on the first book of the series. There was just so much backstory and history that was relayed to us as the reader and had a huge part of the story. I also think that by not being able to 'witness' the past events, it lessened the investment into the characters, I wasn't as effected as I should have been. Also, the repetitiveness was extraneous. It seemed that every time Modnik(the were-jaguar) was brought up that we got a recap of the event that took place pre-book.

There is a broad spectrum of Shifters in Shepherd's Moon, as well as other preternatural creatures. It was fun to see all the different ones as they came to play in the story. For instance, there are vampires, Nephilim, different weres like jaguars, coyotes, wolves, horses, hawks, cheetahs. In other words, Stacy Mantle brought a lot of new concepts to the table that I really appreciated.

Alex as the female protagonist was a strong voice, in my opinion. I liked her determination and fierce loyalty to her pack, but I couldn't figure out if she was 20 or 24, I think each age was mentioned once in the book. I also had to keep reminding myself of her age, she reads as an older woman, and it might have been the authors intention because Alex hasn't had an easy life. She's had to grow up quickly to take on certain responsibilities. She seemed to fumble around a lot with her responsibilities and lacked a certain amount of experience, and that's the one thing I found consistent with her age.

I found the plot line extremely intriguing, capable of pulling me in, but incapable of hiding the inconsistencies that were scattered throughout. For instance, Alex tells us that weres aren't born, they are made, but then she has a were-jaguar in her pack that has had multiple births, currently raising two as jaguar cubs because it's easier to raise them as cubs than humans. They were born, right? So maybe Alex meant that they could be born or created? Or are Shifters different than Weres? I don't know, I constantly had my brow furrowed as I tried to decipher some of the things in this book. But, as I said, the plot line is super interesting, it just needs to be polished up for the full affect of a potentially great story to take place. There were also a lot of misplacement's of quotation marks, or lack of. It was a distraction that took away from my reading pleasure, usually I tend to ignore error like that, but it was a little too obvious.

The romance, in my opinion, was non-existent. The guy that I thought would be the perfect match for Alex was too easily dismissed because she could read his mind and they were best friends since they grew up together. I felt that there was a lot of romantic potential that Stacy Mantle could have cashed in on between Billy and Alex. There was a repulsion/attraction thing going on with Tristan, but there was only one moment where he was attractive to ME as the reader. And don't get me wrong, I like romance in my stories, but it's not a necessity that I need to be able to enjoy a good story.

I should be giving this book 2 stars, but I did actually really, really like it. The characters were fun, the plot line drew me in, but it needs to be re-edited by the author so she can polish it up a bit more. If she does that, then I think she will gain more interest because the story and the series has A LOT of potential. I am extremely curious to see where this series will go, so Stacy Mantle can count me in line for the next installment.