This review was originally published on the book review blog justonemorepaige.wordpress.com.

This is my first post as part of a promotional blog tour. Did you read that? Let me write ii again, just in case. This is my first post as part of a promotional blog tour!! That’s right, that means I was sent this book in exchange for a review. And I literally cannot tell you how freaking exited that makes me. Seriously. But that’s not the point of this post – this is all about the book, Immer, so let’s just right in to that.

The description of this book really caught my interest. A version of the world where fairies and vampires and werewolves are real…and everyone knows they exist. Fairies have the power to heal and work in healthcare. Vampires are still pretty secretive, because of course. And wolves have become the police “Force” that protects humans and keeps the peace. I mean, I won’t lie, that’s a world I’d love to live in.

This story focuses on the wolves, and in particular, Alpha Will Jaxon. He’s the head of the Force in his city and is working undercover to bring down an illegal drug syndicate that is using trafficked women to sort and package product. As part of his initiation, he is required to take part in “grabbing” one of these women. Halfway through the abduction attempt, the woman, Rayne, looks into Will’s eyes and the fear he sees stops him cold – he lets her escape. Although he is able to explain it away and preserve his cover, he can’t get the woman out of his mind. At the same time, as Rayne recovers from the traumatic experience, she is convinced she saw something different in the eyes of the man that tried to kidnap her. She is sure he was a wolf, but can’t justify it, since they are supposed to be protectors. The rest of the book takes exactly the “romance” course you’d expect. Will cannot stop thinking about (or stay away from) Rayne. And though their contact is born from his overwhelming guilt about what he did to her and his attempts to right it, he finds, as things progress, that those feelings are changing into something deeper. Though Rayne starts out terrified and uncomfortable around him, she accepts his help, hoping that learning to defend and protect herself will give her back her sense of security. And as we see with Will, her feelings begin to change and deepen as well. But for each of them, their own guilt and confusion over how their “relationship” started, and the differences between them and their two worlds, threaten to crush those budding feelings.

Overall, this was a successful, if slightly unorthodox, paranormal romance. I say unorthodox because the, usually quite omnipresent, “steamy” side of this genre was particularly quiet. That is not to say that the romantic tension was not there, or not done well. In fact, let me tell you, McFarland knows how to string a reader along. There were so many times that I got my hopes up, was so excited for impending release, only to have it be snatched away. It was super stressful, but in that good romantic book stress way, of course. To that end, I think the author did a great job setting the mood and building the atmosphere. The beginning, the “world building” part of the book, was a bit juvenile. By which I mean that the exposition was just a little too unpolished/unsubtle for my taste – lots of telling and not enough description/showing to allow the reader to really use their imagination with the place. Towards the middle, there were a few times where I felt like things got slightly repetitive. There were some scenes and inner dialogue that were super similar and essentially the same plot device, that could have been condensed down without losing much. There were some scenes though, like when Will and Rayne played outside in the snow, that were just super cute. By the last 15% or so the plot had really picked back up and I was speed reading like crazy to see what would happen. It was a nice dramatic ending, as one would expect from the crime/thriller aspect of the novel. From the romance side though, after all the build-up I felt like the “moment” for Will and Rayne was just too fast and I wanted more! I mean that’s not the worst problem ever, in fact I suppose it could be seen as a kind of compliment, but it all just happened so fast. I would have loved to see more of the happily ever after, the “completion,” if you will, of Immer. I respect the author’s choice not to write that, but still…I can wish for it.

My biggest gripe with this book was with the writing itself. There were times where I could tell it was just editing issues, small typos and things like that, that are annoying but don’t necessarily affect the bigger picture. But if I’m being honest, the entire book was written in a very “first attempt” sort of way. There was very little nuance in the word choices, the depth of dialogue (both inner and between characters), and just generally I could a lot of the same issues that I see in many YA novels, the writing that assumes readers needs everything explained in detail because we will not be able to come to a conclusion on our own without it. It’s a frustrating style, but it’s also something that you can work to tune out (I’m getting pretty good at it actually), and allow yourself to enjoy the story underneath the surface. Looking past that, you can tell this is a story that means a lot to the author. It’s almost as if she wrote these characters, especially the main one, to portray a world and a story she’d love to live: a world where fantasy creatures are real, there’s a little drama and a great love, and she owns a books store. It doesn’t sound half bad.