Dull, dull, and DULL!
When I bought this book, it was because I thought the summary was promising. And to be honest with you, I'm a sucker for romance where the people in it are from different backgrounds. Of course I usually like that trope when it's done right. And by right, I mean actually interesting.
The summary is this:
There is a girl named Taryn. She was raised by her grandmother who died recently and now lives with foster parents who aren't abusive (okay, they get one point for avoiding that stereotype) but do work several hours a day, so of course that makes them conveniently absent for most of the story.
Taryn has Ménière's disease, she has an interest in journalism, oh, and she's fat. The latter of which she bemoans every chance she's got. And of course she never resolves that but she does stop talking about it when she gets her man. Which isn't too bad in itself, because, hey, what's wrong with loved ones helping you love yourself? But it just comes off to me as if she only likes herself when she's getting together with a good-looking fellow. And that just isn't empowering at all. And to all those authors out there that want to write fat protagonists, keep in mind that fat people in real life, we don't focus our whole lives on our weight. We have this thing and it's called individuality.
Taryn is just not interesting. Her interest in journalism is only mentioned, like, twice, because God help us, it would be bad to give a character a hobby. And her Ménière's disease plays a little in the plot but the plot itself is far too simple so we can't get too impressed about it.
Now Taryn lives Tuscon, Arizona. Tuscon is one of the many cities where there has been a problem of teenagers mysteriously disappearing.
And this is where Taryn's love interest, Erick comes in. Erick is a twit, but we'll get to that later....
So the reason the teenagers are disappearing, it turns out, is because they are being kidnapped by these creatures to an alternate world where they serve the evil Lord Synomea (yes, that is the villain's name. No, he is not named after an STD.) Now this is where Erick comes in: he is from another alternate world, where he and his family and friends are all knights trying to prevent the teenagers from being kidnapped by Lord Synomea's creatures. One night, Taryn is almost taken by these creatures, and to the knights' astonishment, she is able to fight them off of her----apparently Earth people are weak compared to Erick's people. They don't go into details about it and to be honest, I was kind of interested as to why; they don't delve too much into Erick's culture. It's just there.
Now Erick falls in love with Taryn. He doesn't talk to her in more than fifteen words when they first meet so you can't help but feel the urge to stamp a restraining order on him if you were in Taryn's place. Erick decides to pull an Edward Cullen and places a spell on Taryn where he visits her each night and she knows who he is, but when he leaves, she forgets until he shows up the next night.
And of course all that visiting they just go on about them being in love with each other. They don't dig further on that and so their love is like their personalities---shallow by all means.
The same goes for the rest of the characters. Taryn's best friend reads like the Token minority best friend that's all "you go girl" and "you are a great person!"
Erick's sister and friends have little personality, and are mostly there to dote on their dimwitted friend. One of the them is a girl named Finella, who is part elf (and they don't mention ever again about the elves or other possible races in Erick's world, because they don't mention anything else about Erick's world except that it has a green sky and knights!) Now Finella and Erick used to date one another and mutually ended it so they're friends now, with Finella still in love with Erick. Of course she's rude and snide towards Taryn throughout the story and it never changes. Finella is honestly just there to play the Popular Bitch role, and she does not change. She's so pointless. All the characters are stock but Finella has to be the absolute pointless one in there.
Now the plot goes that Taryn is finally kidnapped by Lord Synomea because it turns out she's a special snowflake and I'd rather not delve into spoilers but the fact remains that there is every single cliche of the fantasy genre in there.
The prose is dull, and written the way the author thinks a fantasy novel is supposed to be. And I almost have to wonder what terrible fantasy books she has read to write this novel.
The main characters are both bland and melodramatic, with the villain sloppily put-together and the backdrop characters not at all nuanced but just there.
Quality romance? Quality fantasy?
You will not find it here.