Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am mind-boggled that, at the time of this review, this book has over a 4-star average rating. This was one of the worst books I've read in a while, and the lead characters were incredibly shallow and unlikeable. Our heroine – Mackayla "Mac" Lane – is a vapid, 22-year-old bartender whose main concerns in life are her hair, her wardrobe, her fingernail polish, her tanned legs, and the color pink. That is, until her sister is killed in Dublin. Then her main concerns in life are her hair, her wardrobe, her fingernail polish, her tanned legs, the color pink, and her sister's death. Her vanity and concern about her appearance are endless. At one point Mac even mentions after trying to disguise herself, "I might never manage ugly, but at least I bordered on invisible." Really. When describing why she likes museums, Mac tells us, "I should probably pretend it's because I'm so erudite and scholarly and love to learn, but the truth is I just love shiny, pretty things." If this honesty was supposed to be endearing, it failed miserably. The dialogue throughout the book is painful with Mac sounding like a snarky, immature 14-year-old the entire story. I would get completely thrown when the death-by-sex Fae would show up and there would be some weird sex scene – like Mac masturbating in broad daylight in the middle of the street or being naked on all fours in a crowded museum – because I would forget how old she was. Male lead Barrons isn't much better. He starts out as an arrogant douche and pretty much stays that way throughout. Maybe his smoldering glances at Mac's boobs were supposed to make him more likeable, and he does save Mac in the end, but that just made me question his judgement because I wanted to kill her halfway through the book and that feeling never went away. Mac is soon staying in Barrons Books and Baubles, a cavernous bookstore Mac likens to the library in Beauty and the Beast. She also mentions that Beast gifted Beauty the library on their wedding day which is incorrect, but let’s just skip that. I thought that was a ridiculous way to describe the place, but it briefly raised my hopes that there might at least be a little book talk. Wrong. Mac tells us she loves books, but they're not really mentioned again, except for the magic book they're seeking and to let us know Mac thinks Fleur Delacour was miscast in the Harry Potter movie. Later in the story she even forgets she’s living in an enormous bookstore and purchases maps of the city at a gift shop. She remembers the next day – an easy detail to forget no doubt. The monsters are monsters, the cops are inept, blah blah blah. And the frequent pop culture references (Green Day, Harry Potter, Rolling Stones, Addams Family, etc.) seemed like cheesy attempts to make Mac seem cool (they failed), but only served to repeatedly pull me out of the story and in the long run will only date the book. Some of the passages in the book were so bad they were memorable: "I was going to hurt for my sister until the day I died. If you don't know what I mean or you think I'm being melodramatic, then you've never really loved anyone." - and - “If you’ve lost someone, then you know what kind of things go through your head and need no reminder from me.” Umm, this just seems like a lazy-ass way for the author to skate by on not having to actually describe emotions. She'll just let the reader figure out what she means by letting them rely on a similar experience, if they've been unfortunate enough to lose a close loved-one. “I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or appalled by how shallow I was.” Allow me to help – be appalled. “I won’t bore you with the details of the monsters that came through the doorway that day.” Hmmm, are you just tired of writing at this point or not creative enough to come up with some more monsters? You haven’t seemed to mind boring me throughout the rest of the book, so why stop now? In the final battle featuring Mac and Barrons versus the monsters, Mac turns out to have amazing instincts and kicks ass. I know this, because without any training and very little experience, she tells me how amazing she is…. I mean she even italicizes “amazing” so she must be pretty good, right? In fact, she’s able to work like “the missile-targeting system of a stealth bomber, locating and locking onto anything Fae once it was within a few feet…” It predictably (and thankfully) ends with Mac and Barrons escaping, the two of them starting to discover their feelings for each other, and with the author setting the reader up to buy the next book in the series. Count me out.