Sentinel {Shadowborn Rebellion #2} Cyndi Friberg 18th July 2020
I just want to say, first and foremost, that the person on the cover of this one looks like a mix between Chris Hemsworth and Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher series. Okay, moving on.
I love me some paranormal romance - this is no secret. And sometimes I just get in a mood and devour a lot of it at once. This one caught my eye on Netgalley, and I was really happy to be granted an ecopy of it for review. Upon finding out it was the second in a series, I decided to go back and read the first one - even though these are essentially companion novels, there is an over-arching plot that does come through in each book. And I found that I actually preferred this one to book one, Slayer, just as I liked the main characters a touch more.
I will say, though, that this was kind of an average paranormal romance over all - there were elements of certain tropes coming through that weren’t handled particularly well (‘not like other girls’ and ‘overly possessive masculinity’ were the main two), the relationship felt extremely sudden, and parts of the plot were quite jarring - there wasn’t a lot of flow from one part to another.
The big issue that I had with this one was the introduction of physical disfigurement and disability - it was discussed somewhat, but not really very much, and there was an element of disfigurements getting ‘fixed’ that left a bad taste in my mouth. I think there was some attempt to address the experience of having a disfigurement and/or disability, but it was incredibly minimal and somewhat clumsily done.
I did like aspects of the story, though, otherwise I wouldn’t have continued reading. Salvo is a really interesting character - I love the gadgets he has for his espionage work and how they seemed to have their own personalities a little bit - that was really fascinating to read about. The sex scenes were quite good, and (this one is also present in the first book) the idea of the ‘link’ between courting characters being established was really interesting - something I think could have been explored further, actually. The communication between the characters was really good, too (often part of the aforementioned link), and so the book almost completely avoided the classic irritation of a lot of romance novels of miscommunication or just not talking - often leaving the reader yelling at the book ‘JUST TALK ABOUT IT’.
Overall, this was quite an enjoyable read, it just had a few flaws and needed to explore certain things more and also more effectively to bring the rating up for me. I think I might continue on with the series, whenever the next book comes out.
6/10 spy gadgets with mental links.
I received a review copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings are my own.
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