Dark Expectations by Janiera Eldridge

Dark Expectations by Janiera Eldridge
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Received this for free through the "Read It and Reap" program!

This book picks up where the first book left off; Ani is now Queen Vamp and working hard to maintain peace and balance. Diego, her lover, seems to think his way is best and goes to screw it all up! I was railing at the very beginning at Diego. How dare the one person she loves and should be able to trust go behind her back like that? And then she's kidnapped...hooboy.

I like the storyline. I like this author's new definition of vampires and their creation (you get a hint of it, expanding from the first book). But I found this book hard to get into fully, mostly due to editing.

As other reviewers have noted, the book suffers from a lack of good editing. Names are interchanged, phrases are off or missing complete words (although it's funny how your brain mostly fills those in!), etc. I don't like to nitpick on those kinds of things, but it really does detract from the story because it derails the reader. The author has said there will be a new, re-edited copy soon, so that should help!

Some of the dialogue isn't very believable; it seems to stutter for me, much like how I felt in the first book with some of the action, etc., but you can feel the author's voice growing in leaps and bounds. I think with proper editing this story would grasp its readers much more quickly, pulling them in to this alternate world the author has created.

The ending is holy wow abrupt. I actually flipped back a few pages, reread, and then tried to move forward thinking I was missing something. I'm used to a lot of series having a cliffhanger ending, but this didn't feel like a cliffhanger to me. It was as if we left in the middle of a conversation and there should be another page.

Thanks for the read, Ms. Eldridge! I look forward to seeing this series to completion and finding out what happens!

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