Frustrating and simple.

Insta-love vampire romance. This book uses the ‘fated-mate’ route that i usually associate to shifter books.
I feel like the insta-love thing was sorta too instant. Like I wish there was a better explanation or build up before it was just sorta plopped on you like that. Because it wasn’t built up at all, the romance took a while to get comfortable with and in an annoying disassociated way.

The romance leveled out for me significantly through the book when the build-up and explanations were added after the fact. I was convinced I’d hate the romance in this book and really was annoyed with the writing at first but it corrects itself much later on to help make the book more consumable. The way its went about though just never shakes the fact that something just felt incredibly off about the writing style.

I did not like the main character, although the majority of this book is told through Alec’s perceptive, by the end of the book i know absolutely nothing about him still. He is very much a blank canvas of a character with very little attention to detail about his personality and back story. I just could not vibe with him when there just was not a lot of work to get a reader to care about him. He really was a wet paper rag of a character that contributed little to nothing.

Cronin on the other hand was absolutely loveable and easy to get to know. He’s more fleshed out as a character with a lot of detail going into explaining his appearance, back story, personality and motives. This attention to detail on Cronin reallllllly made the drastic differences noticeable on how the 2 main characters were built up. It really should not have been this unbalanced.
Cronin is main/side character, a few areas of the book you see things from his perspective but the vast majority of the book is still focused on getting you to believe that Alec is the star of the show. Despite the fact Alec has no redeeming qualities or any character built for him.

The Erotic moments are terrible. Theres a whole lot of build up to get you to care about the highly anticipated sexual moments but you will be disappointed when it does eventually happen. Its very much done and over with in minutes with not a lot of attention to detail it and it felt rushed.

The finale erotic moment though made me absolutely upset by the end of the book when after all this build up and we finally get to see these 2 have proper sex. The sex ends up being the quickest of quickies and then you get a ‘fade to black’ moment. Like the author could not be bothered to get a little graphic for anything other then a mild show that we’ve been getting through out this whole book.

If that fade to black moment happened earlier in the book, i would have thrown this out the window and never picked up this book again because i hate when that happens. Like let me appreciate this relationship that has been built up for us.

I did like the tension this book gave to these two trying to figure out a new relationship, but when that tension is not rewarded properly by a decent Erotic moment to relieve it, of course I’m going to be annoyed as a reader.

The overall story that occured in the background of this romance was so-so.
Nearly all of this book takes place in a apartment. And the excuse is that Cronin can fast travel. I hated this approach as that really was a cheap way to avoid a lot of world building or adventuring out of this apartment when the characters can just blink around everywhere with no restrictions. I felt very annoyed with the plot as it was just way too easy. The whole fast travel thing Cronin can do really cuts out any tension that you would hope to feel about a plot.

I do think 2 stars is fair though, as much as i didnt like this book. It was a easy read. If i had known though a lot of these issues I had with this book. I would have made a better use of my time and skipped it.