By Jennifer Anne Davis
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Deceptive Inheritence is deceptively good. I chose to read this book after an intense horror fantasy read (The Calamities by Chuck Wendig, excellent book, keep an eye out for my review) I needed something light, but not cozy or too twee. There are a few authors out there that will fit this but none of them have released a new book in their series, but this book seemed to cover all the right angles. Fated mates, academia shifter romance. There is something so satisfying about picking up a book when you know it covers all your favourite angles. I did not know anything about this author before hand so I’m going in blind.
The storyline starts off pretty basic. Our FMC is the new girl on campus, transferring into her junior year, excited to be able to move away from her overbearing, but loving mother. She has led a very sheltered life up to this point and can’t wait to have the freedom to do all the fun things that living away from home and going to university can offer. Then she meets the MMC, a hot rugby player who she is drawn to myteriously and who is drawn to her. All very typical and I won’t share the details, this is standard shifter / fated mates fare.
My first reaction to the writing was that it was very straightforward, to the point of sparseness. And this is a good thing. Not everyone has a gift for language but many writers *think* they do, and we end up with pages of purple prose, or weird sentence compositions that an author thinks gives their writing an “olde timey” formality. Sometimes there are awkward metaphors like “the sun was a yolky thing”, or there are paragraph upon paragraph of navel gazing monologuing by the main characters. I cry out for action! The writing here is simple, like “I was confused and so I said “I don’t understand what you mean” How wonderful is that and it takes away chapters of angst and miscommunication. It does mean that the author has to actually fill the story with action, and things actually happen here. Our FMC goes to parties, and classes and hangs out with her roommate and has lunch and watches the rugby match. It’s not that difficult to have characters actually do things that show the reader how they act and feel and think, as well as give the reader a sense of the world around them, the rules by which the shifter world works among the humans, as each novelist approaches it differently.
So, we have a story that is compelling, if simple, a FMC who is naive, but understands why she is and doesn’t pretend to know more, a MMC who is an Alpha, but also makes mistakes and is kind of feeling his own way around as he’s only 21. A surrounding cast of characters who have personalities and feelings, with enough push and pull that we don’t have to make this a bully romance to create suspense or conflict. Parents still have the upper hand here, with a lot of the conflict about pushing overbearing parents away or trying to live up to their expectations. Unlike many YA novels where there is a “we don’t need to listen to your authority”, the protagonists understand that they don’t have that kind of power. One of the tough things about being an adult is understanding that sometimes we can’t get what we want, because of the greater good. The third act break up here is not over a miscommunication, or a kidnapping or any of those tropes, it is just that life is full of responsibilities and sometimes you can’t say fuck it all, we’ll do it our way. I don’t want to give away spoilers, but the communication between the characters is refreshing. They are just separated by obligations that love can’t overcome Life just sucks that way sometimes.
This is book one of a series, so it ends on a cliffhanger. Hopefully the next books are coming soon. The author seems to be prolific so this is not her first novel or series. This is usually a good sign that there will be a follow up book in a reasonable amount of time.
I gave this book 4/5 stars as it delivers exactly what it sets out to be.
