I rarely take the time to write reviews. However, I have so many things to say about this book compilation. I’ll preface this review by saying that I chose to purchase this set because 4 books were available in the series for one credit, what a deal.
Unfortunately, things were problematic from the start. This was my first read by McKenzie Hunter and I caught on quickly to that fact that McKenzie utilizes one of the most annoying writing styles, and that is choosing to use big words in an effort to class it up. I love that a lifetime of reading has improved my own vocabulary, however this language did not feel organic to the characters or storyline.
My second issue is that based on the synopsis we are given the impression that this story follows a singular lead protagonist Skyler. However, this is not the case. In fact the author jumps around to the POV of at least 3 characters at whim and this becomes super confusing. For example, the story starts from the primary female lead Skyler’s POV for the first couple chapters of the first book. Then, seemingly without transition the story switches to the POV of the secondary female lead Chris. Even if this switch didn’t make the story unnecessarily confusing, Chris as a secondary character is in no way compelling and her POV does not add anything to the overall arching storyline. In my opinion the first two books would have been improved by keeping Chris as a side character and leaving her POV out of the story.
This brings me to the third issue with this audio book, the narration. As was mentioned by other reviewers Jorjeane Marie is so slow and monotone that I started zoning out and had to rewind several times. On top of this, there was no variation in tone or pitch from character to character which also made listening super confusing when the POV changed without transition.
The story and world building is very interesting and is what had me sticking with the series when I wanted to quit after the 2nd book. I’m glad that I didn’t because the 4th book was the best and where things between the characters really started to gel.