This is an OK shifter/witch romance, but it seemed that the couple was more in lust than in love. I also found it very difficult to like Cerise. It gets 2.5 stars from me, rounded up to 3 stars.
Cerise was very hard to like. She wasn't as bad as her sister Raven in the first book, but I still didn't like her much. She was really rude to Axel for a lot of the story, but still thought he was hot. Then she had sex with him several times, when she still didn't want a real relationship. Since he had indicated he was interested in more than a fling, that was a rotten thing to do. Her attitude was supposedly because of her terrible ex -- but it was unfair to Axel. So I really didn't get why he was so quick to let her get away with her terrible behavior.
Axel was likable, but he did do/say some stupid things. His mistakes weren't bad enough to excuse Cerise's bad behavior, but they were pretty dumb. Cerise had good reason not to trust him at first, but she should have gotten over it much sooner than she did.
I really didn't believe that Cerise was in love with Axel, because she was rude to him for so much of the book. Then, all of a sudden, after they sleep together, she loves him? I just didn't buy it.
One other thing, and this is minor, but it is a pet peeve of mine. The characters on the book covers should look like the description of the characters in the books. Cerise is described as having red hair -- but the woman on the cover has brown hair. This may not be the author's fault, but it still bugs me.
My rating system is below.
1 star -- Hated it, or did not finish. I usually only give this rating if some of the content is truly objectionable to me, like if one of the main characters does something really awful, and gets away with it.
2 stars -- Didn't like it. This rating usually means that I thought the writing wasn't very good, the editing was terrible, I didn't like the characters, or it had other major flaws.
3 stars -- I liked it, but had some minor issues with it. This rating means that there were minor editing issues, the story needed more character development, it was just too unrealistic, or had some other fairly minor issue. The majority of books I read get this rating – I do not consider it a bad rating.
4 stars -- I liked it a lot. This is a high rating for me, and I rarely give a higher one.
5 stars -- I loved it, and will probably read it again. Very few books are good enough to get this rating from me. The ones that do are usually classics.