Fate Fixed(The Erris Coven Series, Book 1)Author: Bonnie Erina WheelerPublisher: Compelling Read
When Lexie's mother announces she is marrying a Romanian immigrant, Lexie leaves behind her life in Connecticut for her penance in "The Moose Capital of the World." Small town living is strange enough, now Lexie must cope with her overbearing stepfamily monitoring her every move. They disappear into the woods and keep a secret locked in their shed. Her calm mother is now having violent outbursts and Lexie's sister is hearing sinister sounds coming from the forest behind their home. She soon discovers the boy she has been dreaming about is living in Maine. Despite Torin's reputations, Lexie cannot resist the attraction pulsating between them. Animals and people are turning up dead and Lexie learns the strange, new world she lives in has real-life monsters. When she decides she wants to be with Torin forever, she must fight to protect her family from a formidable evil.
My Review:
I guess I would eventually have to do one of these...my first bad review.The story is told both from Lexie’s and Torin’s perspective, and then a third perspective called Wolf, which we won’t get to know who it really is until the very end. I think that was the only mystery that took me by surprise, though I should’ve seen it coming. After all, the friendliest face is often the most vicious. The beginning was a classic mistake of starting a book by explaining the background, making it drag a lot. I also felt like there were too many characters being introduced and most of them were really fodder, as in no deeper purpose whatsoever than to be bodies lounging around Lexie’s world.
For all of Lexie complaining about her new family’s rule over her, she never actually defies them. She just goes along and quietly cries in her bedroom. Lexie says she does this to not cause trouble for her mother and make their new life easier, but really. Wouldn’t you rebel after having your stepbrothers a step away from molesting you?! Her stepbrothers are ubber creeps, especially Maxim and on occasion Alik. They’re always smelling her, and acting really possessive with her. What really freaked me out was when Maxim confessed to having spied upon her at night, watching as she slept and had arousing dream. If that wasn’t a cue to stop reading this, I don’t know what it was. My mistake was not stopping then.
The supernaturals in this book were the usual. The dhamphyrs are half draugar/vampire, half human. They’re born that way and have to deal with the change and the choice when they turn eighteen. They have all the usual powers, super healing, strength, speed, etc. I imagined them as the vampires from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which made me laugh), because when their emotions run high their face changes and they sprout fangs and change eye color. The pricolici or lycans or werewolves (whatever you want to call them) also have super powers but seem to rely heavily on their animal instincts making them pretty dangerous if a bit unhinged. When they shift they smell like sulfur. Not sure why…
Lexie and Torin’s relationship felt very fake to me. I guess it was the entire “fated” thing, which apparently is code for “I’ll throw myself at the boy that has been appearing in my dreams, even though there’s something really weird about him and I don’t know ANYTHING about him”. I guess I thought Lexie would be smart enough to at least interrogate him before she gave him a tonsil checkup.
Lastly, I usually don’t comment on grammatical errors because it’s very rare when I find one. And I don’t know if it was my copy (I won the PDF version in a giveaway), but it was errors galore! Here are a few of them: tail not tale, eventually not eventully, dose not does, except not accept, open not opened, altar not alter.
If there is something in life I hate the most its things that waste my time. Sadly, I have to say that this book fell under the ‘wasted time’ category.
Favorite Quotes:
“Lexie could swear she felt each of them lean in beside her and take a big whiff.
Rolling her eyes, she snickered at their weirdness – she either had bad taste in perfume of they were part beagle.”
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“Torin was even hotter than Jared Leto and she didn’t think that was humanly possible.”
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“‘In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you deserve can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.’”
*This last one is a quote of an Ayn Rand novel quoted in Fate Fixed*
