I have long been a fan of Paranormal Romance and Jr Ward has been one of my authors. All the readers out there know what I am talking about. We each have a few authors whom we adopt. We preorder their books months in advance and wait anxiously for release day. We are at Barnes and Noble when the doors open or we order from Amazon to make sure we get the book on release day. Sometimes we buy more than one copy to make sure we have the book no matter what happens. JR Ward was one of my authors. But something happened with the Black Dagger Brotherhood right around book 8 and they changed. I wanted to love the books as they came out and with some of them I was successful, with others not so much. The characters were there but the trials they faced were just so awful. Some of it felt contrived. And some of the stories had so many storylines trying to interact, it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. In hindsight, I see that the books had to change and given the strong emotional investment we had in all the characters the jumping around was necessary. Then things got worse. The Happily Ever After endings stopped coming. Some of the characters died and it was worse than the first time around. It felt like the world in the books was every bit as bad as the real world. Tragedy dogged the steps of our favorite characters and rather than resolution we got abdication.
A lot of fans left. And they were vocal about their defections. And a lot of the fans that remained were more cautious. Yes, we wanted to read it. We wanted to see how our characters were doing. But the excitement was tempered with trepidation. What big bad thing was going to happen now? So, I was ambivalent when I got my copy of the Chosen. I have to say that after reading it I am cautiously optimistic for the series. And JR Ward is back to being one of my authors. I’m a little frightened for the next book because I think its going to be about one of my favorite couples and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them.
I could write a long review of the Chosen, but since I am releasing this review on release day I will hold my tongue. I will say this, though. The Chosen has restored my faith in the BDB. So, I will wait with bated breath for our next book and I recommend that the readers who defected recently over a certain death might be surprised by what happens in this book.
In the Old Language, he said, “ Wherever I go, you shall ne’er be far from me. Wherever I sleep, you shall be beside me. What I eat, I shall share with you, and when I dream, we shall be together once again. My love, you are not gone from me ever, and I shall not take another. Till the very night I die .”
Xcor slowly shook his head. “I don’t see your clothes, I never do, and a fancy dress wouldn’t change that. I don’t see wet hair, I feel the strands between my fingers. I don’t see pale cheeks, I am tasting your lips in my mind. You offer me all my senses at once, my female. You are so much more than any one thing about you.”
I never thought a small piece of shade
could bring me so much happiness. That a pile of tools, a bucket, a knife, a
pencil, might become my greatest treasures. Or that knowing Richard Parker was
here might ever bring me peace. In times like these, I remember that he has as
little experience of the real world as I do. We were both raised in a zoo by
the same master. Now we’ve been orphaned, left to face our ultimate master
together. Without Richard Parker, I would have died by now. My fear of him
keeps me alert. Tending to his needs gives my
life purpose.
Tiger! Look at the beauty…and so my mind goes to Anita Blake, mistress of tigers…and then i feel a pang for Domino
