{Review} Shifter: City of Wolves by Avery Burch

Posted by Melanie
Release Date: August 3rd, 2015
Finished Date: August 17th, 2015

Publishers: Self Published
Genre: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Source: For Review
Format: eBook

Pages: 301
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US 

 

She's an elite.
He's a wolf and an outcast.
Their forbidden passion will move worlds.

Everyone knows wolves love with a dangerous passion. They lock on a woman and never let her go. From the moment they imprint on her, they will kill for her, and die for her.

Lyla is more than rich. She's one of The Elite, a paranormal class that rules society with an iron fist. She arrives in Manhattan to begin training as an enforcer.

Zac is an orphan, an outcast, and a shifter. Turning into a wolf is an unforgivable crime in the elite regime. Enforcers hunt down and kill anyone who can shift.

When Zac and Lyla meet, they know love is hopeless, but their powerful attraction is simply too great. Fighting to overcome the ruthlessness of their society, Zac and Lyla learn that true love can overcome any obstacle, but not without dire consequences.

Shifter: City of Wolves, is a paranormal romance that features passionate romance, intensely real emotion, supernatural powers, and forbidden shifter love. It contains mature themes.

The Review: I really enjoyed this book but I found the second half better than the first. In the first half it was quite slow, we get all of the character and world building which of course is good but the second half is when it all kicks off and we get lots of action which the story really needed at that point. I thought that the premise was good and gave a believable theory about this dystopian world, what had happened to the population and why they were grouped the way they were. As always with stories like this and where one group of people holds power over others; we get the feel that those considered beneath the Elites aren’t so much the animals/savages as those who hold the power are and those who dream of more. I can’t say I liked the Elite side of the coin, they are stuck up socialite types who frown upon people, flaunt their wealth and grasp at anything to gain power. Living behind gated communities as if they are kings of the castle, they aren’t nice people at all and they enjoy the segregation between themselves and everyone else. Oswald especially is a loathsome individual, I have to say the author did a really good job of having written a truly dastardly man with sadistic tendencies – I don’t think I’ve hated a villain so much in a long time and I really wanted to see him and his sidekick Lex die…. Simple as that. I also could not stand her mother, she was nothing sort of a bitch and a hypocrite – who in their right mind would make their daughter marry their Uncle? It made me really uncomfortable and sick to my stomach especially when he tried to ‘join her’ in bed *shudder*.

The story also revolves around a love that shouldn’t exist, forbidden if you will because Lyla is an Elite whereas Zac is a shifter. If you aren’t into instalove then I’m afraid this book is not for you because it is love at first sight. We have Lyla who is really innocent and naïve in the beginning, but she comes into her own and starts to see things as they really are throughout the story -which does make her more endearing. I really felt for her because of her situation, she was just trapped and Zac represented everything she couldn’t have but wanted. I thought they both shared that innocence but Zac was a bit more worldly thanks to his ‘father’ and knew how cruel life could be but all of that sense flies out of the window for both of them when the hormones kick in and he risks everything for love.

I wasn’t really a fan of the instalove in this, yes I get the fated mates principal but I would have liked them to have gotten to know each other more in depth before they took their relationship anywhere… they seemed to turn from virginity to nympho in one go and I’m sorry but the sex scenes were cringeworthy, some of the dialogue used had me rolling my eyes and cringing. Plus, they had sexytime at the most inopportune moments, for instance – right after Zac was practically at deaths door and they are trying to escape a burning building, in the corridor of a hotel…because they wouldn’t make it the few feet to the room ?? but saying that, it was the only thing I really had a problem with throughout the book.

Most of the action kicks off towards the end but it was worth the wait, it was fab! We had full on urban warfare, rioting, slaughter and insurgency. Innocent people dying at the hands of a megalomaniac who just didn’t know when to back down, even right up until the end the stubborn SOB was still finding ways to hurt people and I would have loved to have killed him myself! So to sum everything up – it was really good read, well written for the most part, a series that although it has teething problems, I could get behind it and it has the potential to be great so I would definitely read a sequel.

 

Thank you to Avery Burch for giving me the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review.