Bound & Barbed

Okay okay this one is a doozy. Let's start of with what I liked. The characters, yay! Specifically, Maddox. He is our MMC who is a Kova aka good vampires traveling to our FMCs town in order to investigate kills thought me done by the Vasi, bad vampires. Traveling with his friend, Wyott, who was also a pleasant character and added a few good chuckles to the story. Soon after arriving in Evalines town, he gets pickpocketed by none other than Evaline herself. At this quick meeting, Maddox realizes that this is her fated mate and while Evaline doesn't know about this whole mate thing, she does feel an undeniable attraction. Maddox was a perfect MMC, he was soft in all the right places but when danger was around the corner, he was not afraid to protect what was his. And the little bits of jealousy we saw was chefs kiss.

This encounter leads to a little training fun and a rescue mission. My main issue with this story was the pacing. For the first 40% of the book, we are mostly talking about what we want to do and the tension and characters wasn't enough for me to be entertained. It took lots of little breaks to finish. The end was soo much better when it started to move a little quicker.

I wasn't aware this was a debut author which was surprising. My main issue with lots of books is the dialogue but the writing was clear and as a newish fantasy reader, easy to understand. As well, the dialogue wasn't cringy which is always a plus! Another issue I had was the mass miscommunication trope, I mean every time we cleared one thing, another came. This story was two people completely unwilling to share their feelings. The end was okay, not my favorite. Not sure if I'll pick up the next book):