Monday, April 21, 2014

Fallen Redemption / R.B. Austin


Reviewed by: Sooz

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Approximate word count: 90-95,000 words

Availability    
Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: NO  Smashwords: NO  Paper: NO
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Fallen Redemption is R.B. Austin’s debut novel. She writes paranormal romances and young adult novels. She includes knitting as one of her hobbies. 

You can learn more about Austin on her website.

Description:

Emma’s life is crumbling. She is laid off from her job, has no family, and decided to wash away her troubles with a night of drinking. This only leads to more problems as she is attacked on her way home from the bar. However, vampire-like creatures rescue her and while in their care, the leader of the group, Cade, falls for her. Cade and his men have to rid the world of evil, and he doesn’t want to fall in love again after blaming himself for the death of his wife. However, neither one of them may be able to stop what’s coming.

Appraisal:

R.B. Austin isn’t breaking new ground with Fallen Redemption. She uses themes regularly seen in paranormal books of good vs. evil, redemption, forgiveness and love.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Austin creates compelling characters that show a range of emotions. The development of the main characters, Cade and Emma, are believable and inspired. Austin was able to write the characters in a way that make the readers care about what is going on.

Fallen Redemption reminded me of Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed series (at least the first book), which has had comparisons to JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, but I had never read that series. Several paranormal creatures are part of Cade’s group whose job it is to hunt evil and rescue humans from it. These other characters are compelling as well, and could certainly be main characters in later books in the series. I wanted to learn more about them – just not yet. Austin does a nice job of not letting too many people get in the way of the main story.

The paranormal romance is believable. Emma was brought to the compound because she was attacked by a Fallen (one of the bad guys) and needed to be healed. Her initial reaction is that she has been kidnapped, and is frightened. However, as she realizes she is not a prisoner, she lets her guard down. That’s when Cade, timid and reluctant in the love department, envelops her, and both go down a road neither is prepared for.

As expected with paranormal romances, there were sex scenes, but none of them felt dirty or gratuitous. When a couple of Cade’s partners had to go out and take care of some, uh, needs, Austin didn’t go into details about this nameless club sex, which kept the story moving, but allowed you to understand what happened.

There was an interesting twist near the end of the book when Cade and Emma’s affair hit a roadblock, but it couldn’t be the end for them because that doesn’t make for a fun romance.

FYI:

There is sex and cursing in the book.

Format/Typo Issues:

No major issues


Rating: **** Four Stars

1 comment:

?wazithinkin said...

This sounds like a book I would be interested in checking out. I will have to keep an eye on this author. Nice review, Sooz.