Review: Shadows

Review:

I initially snagged a copy of this title from Netgalley. It's one of those books I've heard of and probably had on my TBR list at some point but never got around to reading it. Since it was available on Netgalley (either with read it now or auto approval, I can't remember) I figured great time to give it a chance.

However, by the time I got round to reading it, the file was badly corrupted, words missing, letting missing and it made the whole narrative rather confusing. Unfortunately the title had already been archived, but I liked enough of what I read so I purchases a used paperback copy from Amazon.

I honestly don't quite know what to make of this novel. I didn't love it, but I didn't flat out hate it either. I'm rather ambivalent on it, really. On the one had, the dialogue was snarky and delicious, and I really did love the angel/demon mythology. Not something particularly new in its concepts but the way the novel was told took a familiar concept and made it its own with a fresh and different take. My problem was it was lack of emotional depth and the characters.

I failed to connect to any of the characters. Most of them felt rather two dimensional, I wasn't blown away by anyone, really. I found the storyline interesting enough, the main character Gaby is struggling to get over her twin brother Jude's death, she has a good, supportive best friend, Maggie, whom she lives with. Gaby has horrible dreams about battling demons in clubs and writes pretty gruesome short stories about it. Which attract some unwanted attention when weird things start happening at a local bar they hang out in.

One of the guys in Gaby's dreams is literally there at the bar. He talks to her like he knows her and knows her well, and Gaby's world is thrown into chaos when more people show up to more or less do battle with her. All these new people are pretty thrown when Gaby remembers nothing about them, and apparently knows nothing about her true self. Or what she really is.

Which is where the angel mythology comes into play. I really did like the world building. It takes familiar concepts of fallen angels and Nephilim and gives them it's own twist. And as I mentioned the dialogue between the characters was brilliant. Snarky, snappy, and wickedly fun. Even though Gaby's going through some immense changes in discovering everything she knew was a lie and two different groups of paranormal beings are now trying to force her to remember things she can't....there was something missing for me.

The actual plot of Gaby trying to ascertain what the hell was going on was what kept me reading, but I felt nothing for character or the background histories we learn as the story progresses. There were some truly epic action scenes throughout the novel, and one bit of pretty hot romance towards the end. I did kind of like that the romance angle wasn't really played out that much throughout the novel. it certainly came into the story when Gaby learns who she was with before she lost her memories and why different people were surprised to see her with one guy instead of the other.

I don't see myself racing out to buy all the other books in the series immediately, (unless they were on sale somewhere maybe) though I am probably curious enough to continue the series at some point, if only to find out of Gaby ever recovers all her memories.

Original post: sunsetxcocktail.booklikes.com/post/1292624/review-shadows