Not great, not terrible. Not original and clichéed as fuck.
The weakest part was the romance which seems to also be the linchpin of the story.
It's classic lust at first sight with no good reason. She starts to feel inexplicably drawn to him and crave his touch and so on immediately while first meeting him even before they ever exchanged a single word really. There is bad insta-love and then there is this book.

The other problem I had is less with this book specifically but more with all the plethora of books that follow this same formula.
Magic races have been unveiled and forcefully deported into containment zones (call "reservations" in this case) basically like a prison city.
But it is never explained why the hell any of these incredibly powerful people should accept this completely inhumane treatment. It's not only the extreme segregation but also the casual and severe mistreatment of the inmates.
If it was just a single race with some very specific but very easily exploitable weak point or a sci-fi setting with much more advanced tech, sure, maybe.
But in modern times?
This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic social contract of countries.
The reason why modern governments work is that the citizens get rights and certain guarantees from the government body in exchange for giving up certain freedoms. You don't need to abide by the rules of a government if you don't get anything worthwhile in exchange and if they can't suppress you by force. This is why corrupt governments always lead to high crime rates. If you apply this very basic societal model to books with a world-building setup like this everything falls apart.
Only those who can't fight back or have exploitable weaknesses would end up in reservations like that. Most others would either end up in resistance groups (guerilla groups or outright war) or move to places where they can get a better social contract.
The idea of working camps is to extract as much value out of your prisoners as you can. And these people have literal magic. Why the hell would they have them wash cloth diapers by hand?
And if it's just outright bigotry with nobody in power prudent enough to exploit the potential then they would just be killed. Done. They clearly don't care and are not made to care by human citizens either. So why go through all the hassle of keeping them contained?
Regardless of how you look at this basic setup it just doesn't work.

But after this long semi-off-topic rant I want to make clear that this was not particularly good even ignoring the flawed world-building setup.
It's just tired tropes and clichées all the way down.
I could have partially forgiven this with the excuse that it's hard to cram an entire story into 100 pages without heavily utilizing tropes, but this is not a complete story. It's only the first third of one. I expect this is literally a 300-page book released in 3 100-page chunks. ( )

All supernatural individuals have been corralled into reservations in this paranormal novella. Sam, a local resident, has an unusual gifts - stealing power from others. Living a life in the straight and narrow isn't easy and becomes much more difficult when a vampire walks into her life.

This is one of those reads where you need to get the next book! I look forward to seeing how Sam's saga plays out! ( )

Not a book

This is more the first part of a book, establishing characters and motivations but lacking real substance.

Clean prose (no major spelling or grammar errors) and well written dialogue.

Depressing, since it only establishes the main character’s situation.

It’s not bad, it’s just not good.

I will not be following this series. I prefer my novels to contain a full story. Even a novella should have more story than this did. ( )

Not a book

This is more the first part of a book, establishing characters and motivations but lacking real substance.

Clean prose (no major spelling or grammar errors) and well written dialogue.

Depressing, since it only establishes the main character’s situation.

It’s not bad, it’s just not good.

I will not be following this series. I prefer my novels to contain a full story. Even a novella should have more story than this did. ( )

I really like Samantha’s character. She’s fae, but not quite fae enough. On top of that, she’s a rare and usually shunned type of fae, a Void. Her special power allows her to steal energy from others (though she tries hard not to). With few friends and a parent who belittles her every day, Sam treasures her friendship with Amber. Sam also has a boyfriend, Chad, who she doesn’t really click with but so few people hang out with her, that she feels obligated to give Chad a chance.

Then in steps Roman, who makes her tingle in places she didn’t know could tingle. Roman works for some corporation that makes plastic housing (since iron is such a hazard to the fae). He’s got a secret and Sam immediately keys into it. Roman shows definite interest in Sam but she’s not used to such attentions. So there’s potential there for a meaningful romantic involvement in the next book.

Now all this is taking place on the Mystical Reservation in Illinois. Basically, all magical creatures in the US have been rounded up and forced onto reservations. I think this idea has the potential to be a significant part of the plot. However, I worry that there is some cultural insensitivity too. We’ll just have to see how that develops with the series.

There’s a variety of other characters, like Heywood the vampire and Carl who has a gift with technology (even though almost all tech is forbidden on the reservation). There’s mages and empaths (like Amber) too. The murder mystery was solved a little too quick and the initial build up was a little silly. Why wouldn’t Amber and Sam check their friend’s apartment first, before going to the unconcerned authorities? So that could have been a little more tightly written. On the whole, it’s an intriguing start to something that could be really good, or could be mediocre. 3.5/5 stars

I received a free copy of this book. My opinions on it are wholly my own.

The Narration: Janelle Tedesco gave an excellent performance. She had the perfect voice for Sam and distinct voices for each of the characters. Her male voices sounded masculine. I thought her voices for the bullying authorities were especially good. There were no technical issues with the recording of this audiobook. 5/5 stars. ( )