Oh boy. I did not finish this book. I hate not finishing books – for a reference point, I even completed Fifty Shades of Grey, as much as I wanted to hurl it into the commode and flush it.
I started reading when I was two and a half, and I ran through all the “age-appropriate” books in my house and in the local library of my small Indian hometown by the time I was 10. So through my tweens and teens, I read the ones I wasn’t really supposed to be reading, and the library always had Nora Roberts in stock. By the time I was 17, I had read all of her ouevre (some twice). I moved on to more interesting things when I got to college, and haven’t dipped back in the fuzzy romance category that I dump her in.
So when this popped up on my GoodReads, I thought – hmm, it’s been a while since I read some NR, maybe I should give it a go. Ten minutes and a few hundred rupees later, I started it on my kindle. And an hour later, I stopped.
This was so obviously a paint-by-numbers piece that I couldn’t even bother investing any emotion in the leads. It helped that the leads themselves were Mary Sues, and Ms. Roberts had spent absolutely no words in character development. 6 magical people come together to protect the forces of good from the forces of evil (represented by one evil goddess-type power). Why are they magical? Why should we care about them beyond “they are destined to save the world”? How is this trilogy different from all the other Nora Roberts trilogies where 3 couples save the world from the forces of evil? Has NR actually ever had sex? Does she know that people don’t magically come together in a blaze of glory? How are all her heroes and heroines so fantastically perfect? WHy are all her men rich? Why do her characters never actually struggle or see consequences to their behaviour?
I knew going in that I was going to be bored, but I definitely did not expect to be so very bored. Sigh. Any good good-vs-evil-fantasy-romance-adventures out there that won’t make me turn to book burning?
I would give this -500 stars but I can’t. So it gets one star.
**edited to add the following*
I went back in and finished, because that’s how much I hate not finishing a book. And guys…. It’s not good. It’s not horrible, it never is. It’s just boring repetitive bs and magical virgin orgasming as soon as guy puts his lips on her clit. I guess upside is Roberts at least stuck to the fantasy genre when it came to sex too.