"Maybe I was caught between the two worlds. I was having serious trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality."
While on a backpacking trip in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, nineteen-year-old Maddie Pearce finds her world has been thrown into a vortex and is madly spinning toward the impossible. Abducted by a mad psychopath, Maddie narrowly escapes with her life. But that is only the beginning. Her mysterious rescuer introduces her to a world that Maddie has difficulty accepting as reality. Will this strikingly gorgeous stranger be the key to her future or will she return to her mundane world, scarred from her experience? Follow Maddie as she is forced to make difficult decisions that carry her to mysterious places.
My Rating:
Facts:
Name of book: Survival (The Guardians of Vesturon #1)
Author: A. M. Hargrove
Buy it here: Amazon
My Thoughts:
I signed up in a virtual blog tour, for the third book in The Guardians Of Vesturon series, so I had to read the first two books. Survival is the first book in the series, and it honestly disappointed me.
Maddie had lived a hard life, her parents are dead, and she is trying to live a normal life in college. But on Christmas break, she goes home to do some hiking. What she doesn't know, is that there is a cruel, monstrous man watching her every move. He is planning to kill her slowly and violently.
After catching her, Maddie's abductor almost takes the life out of her with a arrows, and leaves her at the place where she has fallen off, thinking she is dead. Although she is severely injured, she is not dead yet. A secret culture are living near that place and they call upon the Guardians of Vesturon to help her.
The Guardians take her to a cave, where they heal her, but her legs are paralyzed. The only place where she can be totally healed is on the planet of Vesturon, but the guardians are forbidden to take humans there.
Sometimes, rules are meant to be broken. As Rayn, one of the guardians and the future leader of Vesturon, falls instantly in love with Maddie and takes her to their planet to be healed. After getting back from Vesturon, Rayn and his guardian family, four brother and one sister, get to know Maddie better as she now lives in their veiled house.
Everything will turn out okay, if only Rayn's father would leave him alone. Rayn is taken back to Vesturon for a trial to decide his destiny after what he had done. When Rayn goes away, he leaves Maddie in the hands of his siblings, they should take care of her, and that's exactly what they do, until....
After talking to Rayn a little bit by telepathy, and setting the tired Sharra (Rayn's sister) to sleep, Maddie decides to take a walk around. But her abductor has come back, he is there, and now he is drop-dead willing to take Maddie down, once and for all.
What will happen to Maddie? Will she be able to escape her cruel abductor?And will she ever be able to live happily with Rayn? Find out the answers when you read the first book in the series, Survival...
First of all, I should say why I didn't like this book. The plot is pretty thick, there's a great story there, I wish the author would have put more effort into the story and it could have lead into a masterpiece.
But the poor work on the novel is very obvious, I found out that they novel needed a lot of rearranging and editing. There were sometimes, that I didn't know who was narrating, since a moment Maddie was speaking and the next moment someone (whom I have no idea who) was speaking about Maddie.
And I honestly hated Maddie, she is selfish, moody, and a cry-baby. Gosh! We know that you have been through a lot, you don't have to say it every five seconds. And Maddie is so moody too, one moment she is all sweet with Rayn, the next she is snapping back his every kind word.
I hated something else about her too, Rayn loved her soul and heart, but all Maddie cared about was how gorgeous and hot he is. She kept spatting out stupid nicknames like Mr. Hot, or Mr. Drop-Dead Gorgeous. Oh, come on, have some dignity!
I also hated the love at first sight theme, I am really getting tired of it. You don't just see someone and instantly know that they are your sole mate, it's not possible! I wished the author tried harder with the book, she definitely has a good story to tell. Although I struggled hard to finish this book, I honestly tried hard, I should read the next book in the series, since I need it for the book tour.
I hope that the next book in the series will be more developed and captivating. I am keeping my fingers crossed on this one!
Thank you very much....
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