Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The free preview made me think that I was really going to like this book and for the first third of it, I was having a good time. The character development for Charlie was really working and I found myself rooting for the scrappy young thief. The world-building was going well and I was looking forward to seeing what happened. Then everything went wrong. First, Charlie turned into a bad romance character rather than a good urban fantasy character. Despite being kidnapped and beaten, she decided that the man who was holding her was just so dreamy and couldn't stop thinking about how manly he was. This guy, who is being forced into the position of eventual love interest for no reason that I could perceive, kidnaps her, allows her to be attacked and nearly raped in order to gain her loyalty (yeah, still having problems with that), is cold toward her, and for some reason, all of this just makes him super-duper appealing to her. And then there was how when she was disguised as a boy, she was smart and persistent while trying to fight back and escape. Once she was "womanized," she became pretty much useless. She was either a hostage or kidnap-bait. All of the secondary characters were interesting, but it was hard to stay interested in them when I found myself disliking the two main characters so much. By the end of it, I found no reason why Charlie would stick around but knew that she would because they have to force into that rather disturbing romance.