Title: Otherkin (Otherkin #1)
Author: Nina Berry
Genre: Paranormal romance, shifters, magic
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: July 2012 (I received this book as a digital ARC from NetGalley)
Pages: 320
Rating: 2 stars
Synopsis (from goodreads):
I thought I knew myself. Then I met Caleb.
Dez is a good girl who does as she’s told and tries not to be noticed.
Then she rescues a boy from a cage, and he tells her secrets about herself.
Now inside her burns a darkness that will transform her.
Everything is about to change — and neither Caleb, nor the Otherkin, nor those who hunt them are prepared for what Dez will unleash.
My Review:
This book starts with a bang.
Dez gets asked out on her first date, finds out she can shift into a tiger, gets kidnapped, shifts for the second time and manages to escape her abductors with the boy from the cage alongside in tow. All in the first couple of pages.
And the fast paced story just continues along at breakneck speed.
The action and suspense create a very exciting story where at times it seems as if you blink and you would miss a lot of important stuff that happens. For me it was a bit too much action and not enough explanation. I would have loved to have a bit more detail into a lot of the events and perhaps a but more forethought into the consequences. It’s fantastic that the characters are so spontaneous but there were times when I couldn’t quite work out why they were doing the things they were doing – and I’m not entirely sure that the characters understood it either.
I didn’t like how the romance unfolded in this novel. As with everything else, it just happened too quickly with no explanation why or any growth. It was only as I reached the end of the novel that I really started to feel that either Dez or Caleb even really knew who the other person was and it just wasn’t happening for the sake of having a romance sub-plot.
This book was an interesting and enjoyable read but I just felt that I would have enjoyed it more had the pace been slowed down a little and instead of all the action scenes there was a bit more discussion. About the characters, the concept of the Shadows, and about the relationships between the characters – not just that of Dez and Caleb but also those between Dez and the minor characters, and between the minor characters themselves.
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