J.A. Belfield

I received this book from the R2R scheme and quite enjoyed the read. As always, I’ll point out what bugged me and what kept me reading–in that order.

Cons:
- I’m not a checker of blurbs before I begin to read so I went in pretty blind. That said, I had no idea who the target audience was for this book, even by (or especially by) the end. The first chapter screams of YA. But then there are later chapters that are more adult orientated. I still have no idea if I just finished a YA or adult book.
- there were some tense switches. Tense switches make my eyes twitch–it’s a personal bugbear.
- there were some POV breaches.
- there was quite a bit of ‘telling’ going on, which almost hindered the clarity with which I could visualise each scene/character. In fact, I have a clearer image of how Lucky/Liora looks than any of the males/supporting cast.
- the 2nd chapter, where we’re very first introduced to the Lucky side of the MC, was just chocablock full of demonic backstory. I get that we need to understand the demons and what makes Lucky tick. However, it was a sudden bog down of pace after we’d so smoothly met Liora with a much neater ‘showing’ description of what her conflict was. Too much ‘told’ history in too big a block–it would have been much more effective if this had been condensed and dotted throughout where relevant and having the different demons/demions explained as each type was introduced would have worked better, too. It was the only instance this happened. And it felt as though we’d been eased in gently with Liora and then wham-bammed with a tonne of info we needed to suddenly absorb from Lucky.

And onto the Pros:
- the idea seems pretty genuine and I really enjoyed how each half of the MC was treated as a separate entity and given her own chapter (kept it clear), her own triats/personality, etc. That was pretty well handled.
- Keiron. Apart from his early moments of ‘I’m hawt, that’s why all the girls stare’, he’s one appealing guy. Though I did kind of figure out he was the new guy in the bar before we were told.
- Bones. I wasn’t keen on his name–I didn’t think it suited him at all. However, Bones The Character totally suckered me in. If I was Lucky, I’d totally want this adorable and protective guy at my back to catch me when I fall, too. I felt so bad for him–I almost wanted her to forget about Kieron and just give Bones his … um (dare I say …) boner (sorry, couldn’t help it)–but this is probably due to my fascination with guys that can alter their form into beasty-type-creatures.
- the clarity of the worlds and the travelling/transitions from one to the other was excellent.

There you have it. My thoughts. It was a fun read which I enjoyed.