{Review} Shadows of Fate (Shadow Born #1) by Angela Dennis

Posted by Melanie
Release Date: April 8th, 2014
Finished Date: August 7th, 2014

Publishers: Samhain Publishing
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Source: For Review
Format: eBook

Pages: 305

Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US 

Shadow Born, Book 1

Redemption lies beyond the veil between truth and lies.

After witnessing her husband’s brutal murder, Brenna Baudouin lost control of her Shadow Bearer powers and wreaked havoc on her home world. Her penance: one hundred years policing hordes of supernatural misfits that spilled onto the Earthly plane after a cataclysmic war.

She’s on a routine exorcism run when she learns she’s been assigned a new partner. But there’s something about this Shadow Bearer that sparks her suspicions. Particularly when people closest to her start turning up as piles of ash.

Gray Warlow holds tight to the glamour that allows him to get close to the woman on whom he plans to wreak vengeance for betraying his people. Yet as he skillfully manipulates his way past her distrust, he begins to see her not as the heartless monster he was led to believe, but a strong, vulnerable woman.

As they work to put together the pieces of a killer’s macabre puzzle, an attraction deeper than blood and bone flares between them. And they must reveal their deepest secrets to avoid becoming the final targets,

Product Warnings
A thrill ride of supernatural proportions. Contains violent battle scenes, nail-biting suspense, crazy hot sexual tension, and enough twists and turns to make your head spin.

The Review: Loved, loved, loved this book! It had everything I could wish for in an Urban Fantasy novel and it hit the spot time and time again.
To start we get a kickass female lead with a bad history and a lot of power – nice combo! We meet Brenna Baudouin a Shadow Bearer that has been banished from her home world after she  wiped out an army of men following her husbands’ death at the hands of the very people she should have been able to trust with her life. Not only dealing with that betrayal, she is used as a scapegoat and made to pay penance in the form of policing supernatural criminals on Earth for 100 years. She has lost everything and has nothing left to lose even 90 years down the line.
Enter love interest –Gray Warlow- who Brenna is forced to take on as a partner. Gray is another Shadow Bearer and immediately gets Brenna’s back up because there is no reason for him to be there unless a) he was banished himself or b) he was sent to kill Brenna on behalf of the people who believe she is a traitor and with her penance nearly up, she believes it’s the latter. Gray is keeping secrets, Brenna knows this, he wears an impenetrable glamour that she can’t get around and that does not instil trust between them.
They form a tentative alliance however when a serial killer starts striking a little too close to home for Brenna and her friends start turning up dead. With the mystery of Grey, his powers, his agenda and the fact that he’s the first man Brenna has been attracted to since her husband and the strange happenings surrounding the quest for the killer…… Brenna has more than enough on her hands to keep her busy.
As I said, I loved this book, it was so good. I easily connected to the characters and Brenna was so admirable, here we have a woman who has a horrific history and is still paying the cost of putting her faith in the wrong people, she still mourns her husband but carries on doing her penance. Her powers are awesome, they show just how capable she is and she is more than capable of doing her job so isn’t very happy when a ‘partner’ is forced upon her. Gray was a great character too, I liked what he brought to the story, he was a good love interest and I liked how he challenged Brenna in both work and emotionally. He has a secret and it is awesome!! That’s all I’m saying but I greatly enjoyed reading how that played out throughout the book and couldn’t wait for the reveal and it ties in well with the story so well.
The actual story was great and a lot of it has to do with Brenna’s previous life and it coming back to haunt her. Someone is using demons to possess humans and they notice it’s not just the humans at risk forcing many of the supernaturals to band together to protect their own. I love these set ups where the main character takes the lead in an investigation and we watch her hunt down the perpetrator using clues, forcing information – any means necessary really and when it has a supernatural element….. I’m always interested. There was tons of action as they fight off anything that is thrown at them and a liberal amount of magic being flung around too, giving us a good idea of what the supernatural are capable of. It was such an easy, consuming read that I could not put down, with perfect pacing for me too and I was engrossed from beginning to end. It was an awesome start to the series and I’ll definitely be reading more. 5*s 

Thank you to Angela Dennis & Samhain Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.