indie book review | A Writer's Life For Me.

Olivia’s Choice By Taylor Grace

Goodreads Synopsis:
When her boss asks her to complete a project that takes her back to the annax city, Olivia’s lifelong avoidance of the race comes to an abrupt end. The last thing she needs is the arrogant son of the annax leader as a co-worker. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what she gets. To make matters worse, the pesky tionnax, sworn annax enemies, decide to butt in and capture Olivia. They hurt her so badly that Baphrem can only save her by turning her into what she fears most, an annax. Now, Olivia has to decide: can she love the man who made her worst nightmare come true?

Review

I’ve been excited to read this book for a while, so was really happy when it popped up on the top of my to-read list!

On starting the book, you are greeted by a fairly large glossary of terms which did have me a little concerned! I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep up with all the races and names, but as you went through the story I found I was able to keep up fairly well, and if I did get confused it wasn’t too hard to just click back to the beginning and check.

It starts out following Olivia when she is to be sent to the annax city, which she obviously is loathed and scared to go to. The opening created a great sense of mystery about Olivia and why she didn’t want to go, but I also liked that Olivia was obviously a strong enough character to overcome what she feared. She was a really well written character, who I related to in many ways.

After being introduced to Baphrem, who I have to admit got my heart fluttering even after he chucked Olivia into a river, I got the instant sense of the dislike between the characters which fuelled the eventual attraction.

Throughout the book you are given snippets of Olivia’s memory as to what happened to make her so fearful of returning to the annax city, and I found these really intriguing and kept me reading.

The story had a good pace, and I found myself flipping through the pages to find out where the story and characters were headed.

The intimate moments and scenes in the book were handled very well, and I thought they added much to the book and characters rather than just being there for the sake of being there.

Overall, it’s a great read and definitely one worth checking out if you enjoy paranormal romance with well-developed characters and story.

Links:

The Shadow Watcher by Roari Benjamin

I chose this book because it sounded really original from the other ones I was looking at. And I wasn’t disappointed, it was a refreshing and different read.

The opening paragraph was really strong and got me hooked from the beginning. The first couple of chapters did explain a lot of back story, but it didn’t feel like it was piled onto me or bogged down the story, it still flowed nicely.

It was a fast-paced book, which I enjoyed a lot. I liked that things kept moving, there was no points where it felt stagnant or that it could have done with having anything cut out. Everything helped to move the plot along.

There were some great little moments throughout the entire book, nice bits of humour or description, but the way the author described how cats act was perfect and so spot on. There was one cat called Artemis, who was a character in herself, and she was brilliant, very well written.

In fact, all of the characters were good and individual. There was quite a wide cast characters and at times I did struggle to keep up with the names, but the important characters were clear.

The story itself was a very interesting concept, and there was a brilliant twist in the middle where you think you know what’s going on and then suddenly you’re turned around when you discover what is actually going on! That was fun.

Throughout the book there were lots of very unique and original ideas, which was nice. I didn’t see many clichéd moments and the author managed to come up with new takes on well known things such as technology, etc.

I don’t remember seeing many spelling errors throughout, so either they didn’t stand out or there weren’t any. Though the formatting was a little off at times, with the indents being at different spaces. Also, there was a lot of information at times, which was all explained very well, I just found it hard to remember what was going on at times, but in general the story flowed very nicely and uncomplicated.

The way the ending was written, I am guessing it is part of a series. It didn’t feel like too much of a cliff hanger, so I would have been happy to read it as a stand alone, but there is definitely a hint of either a sequel or an on-going series.

Overall though I really enjoyed it, I liked the fresh story, the interesting settings and the pace of the book.

Links:

Goodreads

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com