Obsidian Souls by Donna Augustine
Series: Soul #1
Published on: November 2012
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 228
Format: eBook
Source: Author
Amazon
When innocent botanist Alexandria is attacked on a cold winter night, she believes it is nothing more than bad luck. She never suspects that her attacker is not human, and that Caden, her white knight, would be more of the dark and brooding variety and as scary as the thug he’s saving her from.
Now strange beings are stalking her every move and she does not know why. The cops are turning a blind eye, and she has nowhere left to turn but to Caden. He’s willing to help, but he is short on answers and his motivations are not the purest. If she does not find answers soon, her life as she knows it is over. But is she prepared for the truth she finds?
Although this review is about the book, I feel it’s important to mention, that what intrigued me about this book was the simple description that Donna Augustine provided in her review request. Something about it spoke to me and seemed to be the kind of story I was wanting to read, just at the moment the request came through. Also I just saw it on Amazon for $1.00, and this is definitely worth a read for a dollar.
The story is predictable. Tough guy Caden is as mysterious and as sexy as they come. Lexie is in danger and Caden seems to be the only guy with answers. He recognizes her as not totally human, feels the need to help her out of life threatening situations, but is a tight-lipped character. After a few chapters this became a major annoyance, and because Caden was not giving any answers, the reader, like Lexie is left in the dark for the first part of the book.
The book is told from both Lexie and Caden’s point of view, therefore some insight from Caden’s perspective, for the reader would have been beneficial. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel any spark between the two. While it’s obvious they are supposed to be attracted to each other, the lead up and tension was lacking. The characters aren’t as fully developed as I like them to be. Lexie mulls over her situation, but there isn’t a lot of back-story, therefore no real character depth. The usual happens between Lexie and Caden, like secret side glancing at each other, staring at each other’s attractive body parts, but I just couldn’t believe it. Lexie is a mediocre character. Her actions mystified and perturbed me. I felt like she really didn’t understand how dire her situation was, with people trying to kill her and all.
The characters go through the motions, dodging the bad guys and quite frankly the situations began to blur with other books I have read that are so similar. Caden and his crew are reminiscent of other characters in other series, but I did like them. The supporting characters like Mike, are interesting and funny, and I’d love to see Augustine continue on with this series, but with these other characters as leads.
Several parts of the story were unclear to me. Caden’s origins were not clear. Who Lexie really is, unfortunately was not clear either.
The story felt flat, and I feel like more character development really would have helped this story, in making it more compelling. This wasn’t a page turner and towards the end I really had to force myself to finish. Thankfully no cliff hanger, making this a stand alone book.
This is a quick and easy read. It’s properly edited and I can only see Augustine’s writing getting better. As stated at the beginning of this review, for this price, it’s definitely worth a try.
| Recommendation: | Readers of paranormal mystery and urban fantasy romance. |
My name is Sue Miller and I live in Toronto, Ontario. I dabble in writing and obsess in reading anything I can, especially fantasy and YA. I spend countless hours on Goodreads, twitter and blog reading. If I fall in love with a book I immediately go to the author’s website and devour details on how he/she writes. I’m also a music junkie and have playlists for all of my favorite books. My guilty pleasure is video games – fantasy of course.
