Thanks for stopping by this week, where myself and my BFF's/ fellow bloggers are reviewing First to Burn.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A soldier with secrets.
Immortal Viking Wulf Wardsen once battled alongside Beowulf, and now serves in Afghanistan. He's trusted the mortal men on his elite special operations team to protect his secret, until an explosion lands Wulf in a place more dangerous to him than a battlefield: a medevac helicopter.
A doctor with questions.
Army captain Theresa Chiesa follows the rules and expects the same from others, even special forces hotshots like Sergeant Wardsen. She's determined to discover the secret behind his supernaturally fast healing, and she won't allow his sexy smile to distract her.
An enemy with nothing to lose.
Even as Theresa's investigation threatens to expose him, Wulf is stirred by her passion. Dreaming of love and a normal life, he wants nothing more than to build a future with her. But the lost Viking relic needed to reverse his immortality is being hunted by another—an ancient enemy who won't hesitate to hurt Theresa to strike back at Wulf.
Book one of the Immortal Vikings series.
MY REVIEW:
WOW.
This book is a mixed bag- and that's a good thing. I've been kind of digging some of the military themed paranormal romances that are out there and this book makes an impressive(even more so as it's Ms. Richland's debut) addition to the genre.
The fact that Ms. Richland has a military background shows and lends truth, and authenticity to the book's plot and setting. The back story of the Immortals was really good. Equally enjoyable is the (sometimes humorous)relationship between Wulf and his team.
Not only are Wulf and Theresa very well written, strong characters, some of the others are just are good.
Although I thought the story moved a bit slowly times it worked in the instance of Wulf's reveal and in no way lessened my enjoyment of the story.
I look forward to more books in this series.
And don't forget to check out what my friends had to say by visiting:
And check back next Thursday 7Aug for - Sex with a Shifter, Sexy or Not?
I really enjoyed it. Strong story with strong characters!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that at times it did move slightly slowly.
ReplyDeleteSo glad we picked this book!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Glad you liked Wulf and Theresa - I wish I could have chimed in earlier, but we just spent 11 hours at an amusement and water park ... and I'm not immortal, so I'm about 90% catatonic.
ReplyDeleteThe stretched out reveal - and the long time before they can be together - I have some back story on that. So years ago I was entering this book in lots of contests, under its previous title "The Soldier" (it was a Golden Heart finalist in 2011, among other things). One editor at a good-sized publisher read it in a contest and told me that my couple needed to kiss much sooner in the book. (I guess that hand-holding scene wasn't enough!)
But the thing was - she was a captain, he was enlisted, they were deployed - if they fooled around right away, she'd become one of those women who ditched her lifetime career to make out with a guy she barely knew, and it just wasn't Theresa. I couldn't betray her character by making her do that. A smart woman who got herself through years and years of college, became a doctor, and works her tail off wouldn't risk everything like that - not even infamous romance "true luuurve" is strong enough to make someone literally throw away their entire adult working life. And Wulf has just as much to lose if they get involved - and he knows it - so I HAD to make them wait until they were out of Afghanistan and away from the intense gossip and scrutiny of a small army camp to get it on, or I would have totally betrayed who each of the characters was. Then readers would think "she was too stupid!" So I went with "slow to get to romance" instead of "gah, she was dumb! I would never do that!"
So maybe heroines all have a little bit of me (or people I know) in them, and there is just no way I or any of my female officer friends would have thrown away our careers by page 30!
I loved First to Burn! For me, the slow reveal felt very natural. I've actually read the book twice now, and the second time, I read it with this in mind, because I'd read some reviews complaining about it, but I still felt like it worked. For me, it supports the integrity of the characters. What a fun book - Wulf is so sexy, but the whole mystery/ backstory about the immortal Vikings and their feud is a huge piece of what makes it. For me, it's as much about that as about the romance. Can't wait for the next book in the series to be published.
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