At the end of book 1, Luna finally found the prophecy book that the Goddess has been telling her to find. Honestly I thought she was daft that she didn't investigate the humming earlier or mention it to anyone. I don't even know about magic but I was sure it had something to do with the book!
In this book, the Goddess actually appears to her in a vision and tells her to hurry up and claim all her guys. Still, she takes her own sweet time. By the end of the book, she has claimed the incubus, Ryzeth, the angel, Zuriel, and the kitsune shifter, Dane, but that's all. So she still has six men to claim -- and the six all show up in this book, so they're all present and available to be claimed, she just isn't doing it. The issue is the same one that Gabby faced in the Hemlock Academy series by Kelsey Soliz: Luna doesn't want to force anyone, wants to make sure that each man is comfortable and ready for the claiming, give them time to adjust to the new dynamic within the large harem, doesn't want to have sex just for the sake of having to claim them, wants to get to know them first before jumping into bed with them. And, like when I read Hemlock Academy, I wanted to yell: YOU DON'T HAVE THE LUXURY OF TIME HERE!!! There are bigger things at stake, just get on with it!!
Honestly, first it's the angel who is terrified that his special peen will be too much for her to take, so he's terrified about having sex with her. Then it's the kitsune shifter who is too cocky and put her off, so that she doesn't even want to kiss him good night. Then it's the fae and vampire who have been in a 300-year relationship with said vampire having jealousy issues over having to share his partner with someone new. Then it's one of the four elementals being an asshat because he also has jealousy issues because he has been with the others for 25 years, since they all sparked for each other when they were seven.
Fine, the jealousy issues are realistic for an RH, especially with 12 men in the harem. But there are so many things getting in the way of Luna just claiming them that it was kinda annoying. So much filler happens in between because we have to wait for people to get their heads on straight. A lot of the filler is sex, and to me, a book which is built around sex is boring. If I just wanted smut, I'd go read erotica. I read RH and romance because I want story and feelings.
And all the filler and sex made me feel that there was no urgency. There's no sense that time is running out, the prophecy is coming to fruition, we'd better get ready and have everything in place so that we're ready to roll when the time is right. No rushing. No concern. No jumping into action. Instead, what we get is reading bits and pieces of the prophecy at time because it gets too overwhelming: let's just stop after reading this portion, give us time to digest it, it's a lot to take in. Stick our heads in the sand or cover our ears and go, "Lalalalala," for awhile, don't look at the book for a few days (or weeks, who knows), and meanwhile just have plenty of sex to take our minds off the scary prophecy that we don't want to think about. I was ROLLING MY EYES.
There are a few bits of Luna learning new magic because each time she claims a new mate, she gains a new power from him. But these are very few and far between, especially since she only claims three guys in this book. She keeps getting freaked out whenever she sparks with someone new, even though she knows she'll eventually have 12 men. She freaked out so much that when she sparked with Ty, one of the elementals, while shaking hands, she literally pulled her hand away from his and ran away! Okay, so it's overwhelming, but it was a really childish way of dealing with things. More sticking head in the sand.
Luna's insistence on trying to spend equal time with all of the men and not letting any of them feel left out felt reminiscent of Their Vampire Queen by Joely Sue Burkhart. But, I still felt that she spent more time with some compared to others. In this book, River seems relegated to the background, as she hardly spends any time with him except together with the angel Zuriel. Even flirty and horny Liam doesn't get much time with her; he's mostly busy cooking and bringing her coffee in the mornings. After she claims the incubus Ryzeth, they hardly have any one-on-one time again. She spends the most time with Dane because he's often cuddled up to her in fox form, comforting her when she has one of her freak-out episodes or is upset about something. She doesn't even have much time with the fae-vampire pair Everette and Lucien, mostly because they are a pair so they tend to be on their own. The four elementals come into the picture during the second half of the book and she spends no time with them because one, she's too busy with the other guys, and two, one of them is a douchebag so she kicks him out and then spends a whole day crying and not talking to anyone or eating anything. So I'm not really feeling the development of relationships here, despite the author slowing down the claimings to supposedly allow relationships to develop.
With nothing much happening in this book to advance the plot, this book didn't contribute much to the story arc except to finally bring all 12 mates together, with only half of them claimed by the end of the book. Two stars for a book that's full of sex but no other action.