DNF - interesting premise, but the writing style wasn’t for me
I really wanted to like this one. The premise interested me, and I actually appreciated how much thought seemed to go into consent, autonomy, and the power dynamics between an established pack and an omega who has good reasons to be wary of another commitment. The characters also seemed capable of communicating like adults, which I appreciated.
Unfortunately, I found the prose extremely dense and difficult to follow. There are frequent metaphors, unusual turns of phrase, and long passages where relatively simple ideas are expressed in very elaborate language. After a while, I was spending so much time trying to interpret individual sentences that I was no longer immersed in the story.
I also struggled with the worldbuilding. This version of Omegaverse appears to have an extensive legal and bureaucratic system involving pack covenants, registries, transfers, annotations, reforms, and other paperwork. Characters discuss these things as though the reader already understands what they mean, but by the point I stopped reading, I still didn’t understand the basic rules or what legal consequences some of these documents actually carried. That made it especially difficult to skim through the denser sections because I was afraid I would miss an explanation I needed.
Finally, despite having met the FMC and all four potential love interests, I had very little visual sense of the characters. I knew quite a bit about how some of them thought and spoke, but I was still struggling to picture them.
There are genuinely interesting ideas here, and readers who enjoy very literary, metaphor-heavy prose may have a completely different experience. For me, though, reading started to feel like work rather than entertainment, and I ultimately decided not to continue.
When I started reading this book, I was convinced this was gonna be a five star book for me. The writing was so incredibly good. It was almost poetic. You can definitely tell that this person went to college for English or writing or whatever,unlike me lol. But as I kept reading things just started to go downhill. Again, not the writing, but the rest. It was written as if it was a brief for a courtroom case or something similar to that. They kept saying legal jargon, even though none of them was a lawyer. It was just really really weird and it came across almost robotic and soulless . It was like a velvet glove without a hand. There was just no room for passion or fun or whimsy or anything sexy or messy. The author may be in their own personal life in a delusional land that everything has to be proper and PC and boring as fuck. I don’t know. But because the author made it so that the men could have absolutely no wants or needs or have any passion towards the FMC. And they couldn’t make any moves without her permission. It was just so constricted and everything that you don’t want in a romance book. And again it’s sad, because the writing itself was done beautifully. But it lacked all the meat to the sandwich. And that just made it feel and read very clinical and bland like those people whose house is all white. Nothing about this book made you want to continue reading. And that is really sad.
too much technical jargon and not enough chemistry….
I’m giving this a two because I couldn’t finish it, I understand that she was formally in an abusive pack and obviously that gives somebody trauma. I don’t know what it was, but I feel like the author just was using too much technical terms all the time. I understand that when you have been in an abusive relationship and have basically been a prisoner, you might do certain things like count the exits and make sure that your back isn’t the room. That you might be wary of a pack who realizes they’re faded meat. I love consent tropes. It seemed almost every page the author had to point out that the heroine was counting exits and using I guess algorithms and mathematical jargon and after a while, I was like where is the chemistry between her and the male leads? It just led to a very dry and boring read for me. To be honest..
I’m very conflicted about this book review. I enjoyed the story, BUT it’s like an Amy from the Big Bang theory wrote it…very robotic..which is fine..the main female character is like her..I found it quirky the way she spoke/thought. Again but, all the characters spoke like this..there was no individuality in the characters..they were all Amy characters…got very annoying. And I’m sorry but if I hear them say 15 years/ 12 years/ 6 years etc one more darn time I think I’d scream..just kept repeating parts over and over again..got monotonous..by the time I finished the book I actually had a bit of a headache trying to keep there discussions individual…LOL glad it was a standalone because my head couldn’t handle a second book…Im interested to see if the author writes this way in her other books..
We have an omega wolf shifter, who signed her own contract with a pack at 23, without understanding all of what she signed. A few years later, that pack tries to replace her. She relocates to Blackwell for work, and unexpectedly finds connection. This is book 2, and continues what the runaway omega started political reform wise. Old world, established packs use the same language to trap omegas in relationships. Piper story, opened the door by allowing omegas to request freedom without pack consent, now its finding the back door. I enjoyed this story quite a bit, it's an excellent example of how something as simple as paperwork can be both a trap and freedom depending on how it's used. The relationships build piece by piece, and it's not just fated mates, but choosing to accept, and four alphas being willing to ignore if thats what she wanted.
This story had high potential. However, it was overly descriptive, pedantic. It reads like the love story a lawyer and a meteorologist wrote together with a possible addition of a carpenter to their relationship (who all met at university and kept deep roots there). If you are any of these, then this will be a joy…I would have gave three stars but I could not distinguish between three out of four of the men most of the time.
Read this book ONLY if you want material that will challenge your vocabulary and reasoning skills. It was like I was reading material a college professor assigned me and I barely understood half of what they were saying. My brain cells started sparking in a bad way and after I finished the book, I can truly say that I flatlined and was cooked!
Some of this book was hard to follow because of all the legal talk but the story was really cute.I am glad we don't actually live in a society like theirs.