Very distant feel compared to the other work I've read from Arthur. Not totally my thing, but the world building is nifty. ( )

Emberly's a phoenix Sam is the man she's to love in this lifetime but doesn't understand her or the nature of a phoenix. This is an ongoing storyline, things will not be all wrapped up in the end but leave you wanting more. I have a love / hate relationship with these arcing storylines but Keri always makes things interesting.
( )

I'm not a huge fan of this book. The mythology behind the phoenixes was really amazing, and the action/mystery was decent, which is why I gave it three stars.

BUT the writing really irritated me. It had some flaws I would usually associate with teen fantasy. The biggest irritant was the heroine, Emberly's, constant mentions of her ex's new "darkness". It was too abstract and repetitive. I swear, she mentioned it about a hundred times. ONCE WAS ENOUGH. And she did the same thing with her feelings about him, just droning on and on and on. And she did that super annoying thing characters often do- here is a paraphrasing of Emberly in a particular scene- "Oh, my white t-shirt is all wet, but there's no way Sam will look because he hates me now!" I mean, really? It's absolutely delusional and fake. I hate it when characters stubbornly go on and on about how an ex has no feelings for them anymore when it is OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE. It's either extreme false modesty or absolute delusion. And finally, her setting. She picked Melbourne, Australia (where I live) which is a really tough one- it's not like writing about somewhere in the US or UK, most people will have no idea what the city is like. And Keri didn't really help with that- she kept throwing out random street names and places without giving the reader any sense of what they looked like or what atmosphere they had. Even as a resident of Melbourne, I WAS CONFUSED. I had no sense of the setting at all.

Anyway, this book was an OK read that I'd recommend if you're at a loss for new reading material, but it felt like more of a C-list book to me.
Which is a real shame, as I really wanted to like the book because of its Australian author and Melbourne setting- there's not much fantasy out there set in Australia. In any case, because of this I might give some of her other series a try- surely they must be better? She has so many books out there, all with decent Goodreads ratings, so I feel like there really has to be something more in her works that I'm missing with this book. ( )

All in all I enjoyed this read. I liked a strong female character but I did feel like she needed to just move along already with all the break-up angst. The author did a great job at keeping me engaged enough to ask questions. I also like a unique paranormal/UF premise. ( )

To me this book was boring, even with the action, I found myself skipping through the dialogue without reading the descriptions of fights and stuff like that. I really didn't enjoy it much.

Although the idea of using Phoenix was interesting, it was badly explored.

Before you even know the characters the action explodes and everything is dumped on you, without even introducing to this world in particular. You realize there all these types of paranormal creatures but the author hardly explains how they lived together and if humans are aware of them.

The main character could have been explored better and it would have help introducing the particulars of her species better.

I'm not a fan of urban paranormal action and the romance was really messed up. Three males and female, it's a mess you don't need, no matter if is just sex and hardly ever any emotional plot.

Besides that, the guys are kind of assholes. And I'm not really interested in paranormal booty calls...the main character as a fire being is always horny, even when thinking for vampires she had to thought she would never bed one, WTF?! Is sex always on her mind?! If so that's why there is not much of plot.

So this series is dead to me here and possibly I'm not going to read any other book of this author. ( )