Bows & Bullets Book Blog

This review is also available on my blog, Bows & Bullets Reviews

Cynthia has a secret that she has hid from everyone she knows. Despite the fact that they were taught from birth that it is impossible for women to do magic, she can do it. She is fascinated by the colored spells even as she quivers away from her father’s hexes. Now that Serena has won the right to be independent, Cynthia is finally free of her father’s hexes. That freedom doesn’t last because soon she must be sold off the a warlock, put in the exact situation that she just came out of. Though she willing enters into this arrangement to protect her sisters, she soon learns that this will either be the best decision she has ever made or the worst. You’ll have to read to find out which!

I’ll be honest here. I did not like Cynthia in You Are Mine. I found her annoying and more than a little infuriating. How can you be boy-crazy in a world where men actively abuse women and are applauded for it? Where women are mere objects to be used and abused? We finally see behind the mask here and it was a bit more understandable why she put on that facade. How else would she learn about magic? What else could she say? “Oh, I don’t care about the boys, I just want to study that spell so I can emulate it”? That would not have worked out well. She would have been killed. With that insight, it was easy to be more sympathetic towards her. She still irked me somewhat, with immature behavior at times and a lack of ability to plan ahead. Pretty early on she finds herself stranded in town with no money and no food. That could have easily been prevented with a little forethought, but that isn’t how Cynthia works. It ends up working out well and she is just a teenager, so I tried not to fault her too terribly for that. Despite her faults, she is strong and brave and smart.

I feel like talking about the other characters is a bit of a spoilery thing to do. The official synopsis of this doesn’t really hint at how this whole thing it going to turn out, so I’m trying to keep quiet. I will say that I like the love interest a good bit. I will also say that we get a good deal of Serena and Zade and even a bit of Katherine. I also liked seeing the rest of the siblings and the new characters.

Things really heat up here, with Cynthia trying to show her family that she can do magic without revealing her secret to too many people. If the council finds out, they will kill her. But Cynthia’s family needs to know that women can do magic and Cynthia needs to share the burden of her secret with someone. The world needs to know to, but she must wait for the opportune moment to reveal that. She keeps trying to improve her spelling abilities and watching her train with a certain someone was enrapturing. Falor nailed that will they or won’t they chemistry perfectly.

The one big failing here is the appearance of a cliffhanger. You Are Mine wraps up pretty well, with everything taken care of. A few loose strands hang and obvious the whole set free the woman movement is far from finished, but Serena was free and her family was safe and things were looking up. That isn’t what you get here. I won’t say exactly what happens, but again, cliffhanger ahead. That always irks me when the first book in a series lulls you into a false sense of security because you assume if the author was nice enough to wrap things up for us there, they will continue to do so with the rest of the series. Then you read book two and are slammed with an unresolved ending. It’s almost like you can hear the author cackling (because what other way would you describe it?) at that shocked look on your face and you’re need to know more.

Beyond the cliffhanger, this was a very entertaining story and I loved seeing yet another different perspective. I want to get another angle on this. Can we see one from a male point of view? Maybe not Zade (because really, that would cause way too much swooning), but someone like him? OOOO…or that guy Zade’s sister has at thing for? That would be awesome. Or Zade’s sister herself could be interesting. Either way, I’m excited to see where this series goes!

Audio notes:
I feel rather ambivalent about Caitlin Kelly’s narrative abilities. She wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t great either. She walked that mediocre line pretty tightly. She’s has decent pacing and varies her voice a little for different characters, but has nowhere near the mastery I’m used too. ::coughs:: MacLeod Andrews ::coughs:: I will definitely check out more of her stuff in the future to see if she improves, but she’s isn’t someone I’m going to go out of my way to listen to.

****Thank you to Janeal Falor for providing me with a digital copy in exchange for an honest review****