ARC Review of Quartz Mountain
***SPOILERS AHEAD****
This book captivated me from the very beginning. I was literally invested from the first page and was internally screaming || who’s coming??? || to myself. It grips you at the start, urging you to keep moving forward to find an answer to a question you barely know.
From the start, Savine is sent on a chase that seems to lead to a foreboding ending as the trees he calls his friends won’t speak to him. After a struggle to keep his own sanity, he finally finds freedom in the silence. That is, until the forrest explodes into an ominous prophecy of what’s yet to come but that’s all we get of Savine at the beginning. We’re abruptly cut off from what he learned twenty-five years ago as we’re thrust into meeting Avery.
Morgan and Avery, the twins, seem like a stark contrast of one another. We see this first at the “hey, bear!” encounter on their hike to the lake. Morgan doesn’t seem to have any real sense of danger when it’s all Avery can feel as they hike to the peak of Quartz Mountain.
It wasn’t very long before our characters met their first real challenge and I can honestly say I hadn’t expected it. There was no soft entry to the trauma that led to our main characters meeting and I found myself left with more questions than answers. Who are they really? Where was Morgan? Where had Savine been?
Savine and Avery seem like the perfect pair - both tortured souls thrown together by unexpected circumstance. The mate bond snaps in to place very quickly, even if it’s not acknowledged. I will say that, to me, this happened a little fast and I would’ve liked to have seen more interaction between them before it occurred that I could pick up on as the reader.
I’m not going to lie, I actually forgot Avery was supposed to have magic until it manifested at a crucial time for Savine, Garnel, Kyla and herself. I thought the magical essence we’d been seeing had been purely through the mating bond but it hadn’t. I found myself holding my breath and gasping in relief at the end of that scene. Avery, this small and tiny human, was becoming a force to be reckoned with amongst the battle and blood.
Our main characters are constantly fighting their inner demons and their past. At the same time, we find them fighting their instinct to embrace one another. While it starts out as a slow burn, we see a spike in their mated romance budding as it turns into a friendship at first that not many can rival. The denial of what they’re feeling somehow drawing them both closer to one another while trying to grapple with the reality of the world around them - a world of war for Savine and an entirely new existence for Avery.
Without the full honesty spoken between them, Savine took on the trek of finding Avery once they were separated after a battle. From chapter forty on, you can except a relatively fast paced journey with trials of its own that will spark new questions. Will the bond be confirmed? Will Savine make it in time? Can Avery hold out long enough for Savine to come to her?
It truly is a slow burn, and I will admit there were a few parts that were hard for me to read through. We go from a strangers to lovers quickly; however, and get to experience their budding romance. Before they can experience it themselves, their worlds are again ripped apart and changed by the cruelty and torture of the two kings who do evil better than anyone.
I found myself riding out the moments of passion, pain and friendship as if I was there and experiencing it in real time. I held my breath more times that I could count, willing everyone to be okay in the end. This book is full of love and loss, friendship and forgiveness with a cliff hanger that will leave you wanting more. It was all that I hoped it would be and is one I’ll be glad to add a physical copy of to my bookshelf. Do yourself a favor and do the same.