Loyalties will be tested.
Brooding leader of the Revenant, Drake is still haunted by the loss of his twin sister over a decade ago. Tasked with investigating a string of female kidnappings in the jaguar shifter world, he’s also asked to protect the Leo’s only daughter, who turns out to be a lot more than he bargained for.
Betrayals will be revealed.
Headstrong daughter of the pride’s Leo, Neve … revealed.
Headstrong daughter of the pride’s Leo, Neve wants more from life than to be mated and produce the next generation of shifters. When her cousin mysteriously disappears, Neve knows she’s become the latest victim of the rash of abductions. Willing to do anything to save her, she demands that her Shadow-turned-babysitter allows her to tag along on his investigation.
Delving deeper into the mystery together, will they be able to ignore the building attraction between them, or will their mate bond prove to be too strong?
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What a first book of what’s going to be an amazing series. This first book has action, adventure and steamy scenes that will have you wanting book two as soon as you finish this book. The characters are beautifully created and keep you engaged throughout the book. The plot thickens and flows at a steady pace, keeping you wanting to find out what’s happening each and every pages you turn. It’s a fun book and a very enjoyable read. Dawes has created a beautiful book that has everything you could want from a paranormal wonderland!
This is my favorite book by this author and what an amazing book it is! I absolutely fell in love with the story as well as Neve and Drake. Everything about this had me so very intrigued. Just couldn’t get enough of this at all.
Shadowed Lover is a great read full of suspense, mystery, and romance. It’s a thrilling introduction to a new world of panther shifters and the society they live in. The characters were well written – Drake is a caring, protective, leader and Neve is a strong feminist. I loved their spirited banter throughout the story. I must admit the secondary characters’ story pulled at my heartstrings and left me wanting more information about them. I’m looking forward to learning more about their story in future books. I highly recommend others get lost in this world. I was provided with an ARC of Shadowed Lover for an honest review.
This story was very fun; it was steamy, action packed, had sassy characters and a well delivered plot. I started this story and was immediately taken with the depth of the characters the author created. Each was unique and fun to read about but also felt like a real person, like I had known them for years. The story is about a man hired to protect a woman, but it is also a story of mystery, hunting down a killer and the passion that develops between the two in the process. It was well balanced and the twists and turns has be flipping the pages. I very much enjoyed this story and look forward to more in this world in the future. There are a few secondary characters I NEED to know more about! I received an ARC and am leaving my honest review.
Shadowed Lover has a lot of action and suspense from the first page. The characters were well defined and I enjoyed getting to know all of them. There is a lot going on in this story with a few different point of views. I did get confused going back and forth and I felt that the different POVs took a little away from the story. I found myself a few times skimming over certain POVs.
Neve and Drake were great. I really liked Neve and how she wanted to be her own person instead of what the pride expected from her. Drake has a lot of demons, but i loved how he was with Neve.
Overall I liked the story. Not something I will continue though as I just didn’t feel drawn in as I should have. I’m not one for more than two POVs though, I get quickly distracted when there is more than two. Just because I didn’t enjoy it doesn’t mean you won’t
Shadowed Lover is one of the best urban fantasy and paranormal romances that I have read this year, but you must be warned that this is a dark story with such themes as kidnapping, captivity, rape and grizzly murder, however, the romance is not dark, not abusive nor unhealthy.
The story was fast-paced, action packed and bloody, but also sweet and entertaining with some banter, humor and steam intertwined with the darkness, pain and fear.
It had it all – suspense, mystery, romance and action with entertaining plot, well developed characters, complex world, engaging story with some twists and turns, darkness, pain and a range of emotions that will leave you raw. But it offers also loyalty and betrayal, blood chilling events and lightness with humor as well, and chemistry with sparks that will ignite on the page and make you fall in love with these intriguing characters.
This book is told from 6 different POVs.
However, there are 2 POVs that take main stage in this story Drake (a leader of a Shadow unit of Revenant, they are jaguar shifters with some supernatural powers who are also stronger and faster than the rest of the shifters, so Shadows serve as protectors and security for the rest of them, but Revenants make sure that other Shadows follow the rules) and Neve (a daughter of a Leo – leader of one of the jaguar shifter prides – Black Claw pride) with their romance and investigation of the kidnappings.
We also get several chapters from Katie (a jaguar shifter and Neve’s cousin who gets kidnapped), Jett (a jaguar shifter and Shadow, who is part of Revenant unit with Drake) and Avah (a human journalist who wasn’t connected to the rest of the events of this world yet but we could see glimpses of coming connection in the next book). Then there are couple of chapters from Asher’s POV.
What else can I say? I loved it, I was hooked from the first pages and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. I fell in love with these characters, I fell in love with the story that made me feel alive and raw, the characters and story had depth and flaws that made them perfect. I couldn’t put this book down as it took me on an emotional roller-coaster of a ride with its entertaining banter, sweet romance, emotional depth, blood-chilling darkness and heart-breaking suspense.
This review is definitely going to be a little more critical than I usually write. I know I usually focus on my feelings about the book in my reviews. And these are still just my feelings and opinions, but there are some things I wanted to touch on to explain my rating for this book.
I’m going to start off with saying that for the most part, I did enjoy Shadowed Lover. I liked the writing, and most of the characters. But from the synopsis I got the impression that it would just be our two main characters point on view, but we get a few characters pov’s and this just kind of drove me crazy. It was very off putting in the beginning of the story.
I enjoyed Neve and Drakes chapters the most, and when it came to them I found myself really into the story. But as soon as one of their chapters would end and we got another characters pov, I would lose interest and it would take a minute to get back into the story. Multiple point of views is just not my thing, and I really wish I has known about it before going into this book.
There was one character in particular that we get chapters from that I honestly don’t know what the point was. I found myself wanting to skim over their pov every time. It still didn’t make sense by the end of the book. They really didn’t have any importance to the story in this first book. Maybe they will later on, but I would have enjoyed it more without their chapters.
The other two characters we get get chapters from, I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t say who, I can understand one of them. It was important to the story, but the other one honestly felt like maybe that character should have had their own book, instead of chapters in this one. They felt more like a main character to me and that just didn’t jell very well with it being Neve and Drake’s story. I enjoyed both of these characters chapters, but the one that felt like it should have its own book, was still distracting from the main story to me.
Like I said, I did really like this book. I really liked Lauren’s writing. In Neve and Drakes chapters, I was captivated and on the edge of my seat. I found myself really getting into the book when it came to them. I would have enjoyed this book so much more if it had just been the two main characters.
There is still much to be answered in the future books, and Shadowed Lover definitely caught my interest enough that I will most likely continue reading this series.
Overall I liked the writing, the story and the plot, and Neve and Drake. I am interested to see how certain things will play out in the future books. It was a great start to the series, I just wish it had been focused on our main characters instead of a little bit of everyone.
*ARC received in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and thoughts are my own.*
Shadowed Lover is new and full of action! Dawes is a new author for me, the blurb pulled me in and the book cover is so gorgeous. I think this was a great foundation book, Shadow lover has so much going on. I did get a bit lost in all the detail and background information, which seemed like about 50% of the book. The other 50% which I thought was the storyline, I genuinely enjoyed. It’s interesting and definitely an original, the main parts of the story grip you and pull strongly on your emotions. Shadowed Lover is written in a thrid-person/multiple points of view way that was a bit confusing for me. There was no immediate distinction as to what character you were getting and it switches about from character to character throughout the book so you kinda just have to be ready and go with it, someone else might not have the same problem I did following the story. I found this very stressful a few times having to go back a reread the start of a chapter to grasp who’s view we were getting and what was happening. I haven’t read very many books written this way. Shadow Lover is also a supernatural world mixing with our world, so there was lots of information to take in and so much going on in this book as far as learning the politics of this species. That I got a little bit confused about trying to keep up with who was who and what their position was. Once all that was out of the way I really did like the characters and the main parts of the story. I have to say though, the main couple for this book aren’t who I loved the most, I’m definitely more keen on some of the other character’s stories. Neve and Drake are shooting sparks and all kinds of sexy but they were a little too insta-love for me. I’m super intrigued by Grayson and Mateo. And would love to have more of Katie and Jett and his family. Like I said earlier I think this book was a great foundation book and even though I had some issues working things out along the way, I am very much looking forward to the rest of this series. I received an arc in exchange for an honest review. I would rate this book at 3.5 Stars.