Lover Unleashed was a fun addition to the series, but it was definitely a filler book. It focused less on overall action plot-lines and far more on romance. Likely because of John Matthews' book which saw a series of plot climaxes and confrontations. So it seems Ward chose to focus more on people in this instalment. However, that disappointed me because this book actually seemed to become another V and Jane book and not a Payne and Manny book.

As for the characters, they felt a little flat too. Payne is a character I should love. She's a strong, warrior woman with fiery opinions and she's incredibly smart. Except, she fell flat on her face. I was so underwhelmed it hurt. She was not the feisty warrior; she was willing to give up in seconds. She needed a man to save her- which is not the kind of images we should reinforce- despite the fact she is daughter of a deity, bestowed with awesome powers and just all around warrior queen.

This book also seemed to draw out all the problems of V and Jane's book that just got totally glossed over. In doing so, I just don't think it helped me to like either of them any more, in fact I think I liked them a bit less. It just felt like a lot of forced drama and I'm not really sure I was a fan.

The other issue I had with this book were typos and text errors. When you're this successful you should have a good editor and I've noticed this in a few books now. It's just sloppy. I know people aren't perfect, but simple typos, and some weirdly and poorly structured sentence is not what I expect from a successful published author like Ward.

Overall, this was fun and I'm looking forward to finally getting into Tohrs book for the first time because that's the one I got stuck at last time. I'll still keep reading the series for sure, but I'm hoping the next couple of books are better.