Cindy Mezni - Shadow's Dangers ♥♥♥

Appearances can be deceiving…

Losing a loved one is never easy. Although Deliah learned to live without her parents when fate took them from her as a young girl, history repeats itself and causes her to face even greater challenges when Tess, the woman who raised her and was like a second mother to her, passes away. But even worse than dealing with her loss is the coinciding arrival of inexplicable nightmares that haunt Deliah’s nights.

She becomes consumed with images she didn’t understand and a recurrent dream about her parents’ car accident. Oddly, this dream details different versions from what she had always been told about the accident.

But when a new family, The Wates, arrive in town and begin to pay close attention to her, even stranger events follow. Now, Deliah must not only face her nightmares, but the possibility that a world she never suspected exists. And this world may cost her everything.

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The Romance Vault's Verdict: ♥♥♥

Jointly reviewed Michelle and Sandy.

Sandy, I couldn’t ascertain which part of paranormal to slot it into…….. was it mystical as in Fae, was it Vampires, Werewolves?  Was it supernatural as in things that go bump in the night?  Was it veering towards Aliens?   Sigh, I kinda feel it actually seemed to contain elements of all these things so then do we settle on Science Fiction Fantasy?   I wished I had a clue of the genre before I started and then I wouldn't have kept trying to put it in a compartment until I knew more towards the latter part of the book.  That’s where I struggled I couldn’t find a place for it, kind off like; Twilight meets The Twilight Zone, what do you think?

Well Michelle I quite agree with you as it being Twilight meets twilight zone, I would not know where to place this other than Fantasy/supernatural, since they did have certain powers.

I really liked Garreth’s character and role he played.   I warmed to him even when he was being formidable and foreboding.  Travis I was unsure about and actually still am, I think there’s more to him than meets the eye and I kinda like that bit of uncertainity surrounding his character.  Leighton was pleasant enough but I couldn’t get beyond comparing her to Alice from Twilight, I know that’s my bad but that just stuck with me and wouldn’t let up.  Finally we have Deliah, contritely I didn’t even like her name, I know right!  That’s awful to not like someone because of a name.  But I also couldn’t connect with her character, sometimes she was a teenager and sometimes she was an adult with wise insights and very grown up vernacular and then she’d throw a mini tantrum and showing her age again.  She was up and down a lot and I found that hard to relate to, how did you find them Asndy?

I warmed up to Garreth as his character showed more and more of himself and the way he was protective of Deliah.  And he did sometimes show a more human side I guess is what I'm going for.  As for Deliah herself her character was hard for me to like she did not talk like most teens I know,  I felt for her as she ofund herself alone with her only family a sister who clearly did not like her. But sometimes i wanted to slap her and say wake up and get with the program, you aren't the first person to lose family.  I can totally see how you compared Leighton to Alice from Twilight,, she did seem over the top with her friendship, like they just meet and she Is your BFF for life. That alone would make me suspicious. And then there was Travis, Is he a good GUy? Or is he the bad guy? I'm still on the fence on this one, his character makes you question him almost right away, but at the same time things are not always as they seem.

I really did like the storyline though and when the action scenes were in full force they were very visual, the text flowed at those times and I find the book a lot more exciting.  I thought the book that Leighton gave to Deliah was cleverly construed.  I could imagine running my hand clockwise and anti-clockwise over the text.  I could imagine the images.  The stories though within the book, hmmmm again I had a hard time believing the folk stories and tales of the existence of centaurs, vampires and all the usual myths and legends we have known about being related to who they were suggested as.  Have to be vague as don’t want to give away a morsel of what gets revealed!  Having said all this the story did grab me by Chapter 5 and I wanted to find out who the ‘Wates’ were?   And why they were there and what was the connection between them and Deliah, had you got caught up In that and wanted to find out more?

Sadly for me I never caught the "need to know what happens next" bug. I fought wIth the writing style and never could commit myself to the story. I had a hard time with the way Deliah spoke and the way she acted.  I wanted to like it and stayed with to around 67% but found I was fighting myself to continue reading it. There were parts where i thought oh maybe now i will get it into it but then sadly it just didn't quite get there for me.

So Sandy to sum up it up, I did enjoy this book but I honestly didn’t love it.  The action was great, the linking of dreams and events was ok, the characters mostly were fine but I did find it hard to relate to the age of them.  I also wasn’t aware I was going to have to learn some names that are foreign to us and names of items that are also foreign to us.  What’s your take on it as a whole?

Overall it was just Ok to me, again the way the characters spoke was hard for me to grasp, they were suppose to be teenagers afterall.   I didn't like that I had to learn new words and about the  "new world" that the Wates famiy came from.  Was a lot to take in, I do agree with you that some of the action Scenes were well written.  And then there is the fact that this is a series so you have to be ready to invest in reading more books to learn how it all plays out.

I have to smile Sandy as we have very similar reading taste I thought this would have quite suited both of us, it's not often we are divided on what we have read.  It's funny in this instance that I connected more than you with this book.  For me I think the crux is, if I had know it was more supernatural than paranormal from the outset I would have sunk into the story more.  That was my biggest struggle; trying to place this in it's compartment but not knowing which one as I was reading through until more got revealed.  I do feel a younger audience as in teens to mid twenties will connect with this, an older audience I am not so sure, they may struggle to connect with Deliah as we did.  Did I just place myself in the older audience! ☺

Overall our individual ratings are:

Michelle:- 3 hearts.  Liked but didn't love, enjoyed but had issues with main character.  Hooked enough to finish but sadly not sure I'll read on in the series.

Sandy:- 2 hearts.  Some elements I enjoyed but sadly not enough to keep me reading on.