Book eight: Lover Revealed

Lover Revealed (2007)
J.R. Ward

Rating: 4/5

I will admit that I did a happy dance in the bookshop when I saw that they had this on Friday. Luckily no one who does not already know I’m crazy witnessed this. Hopefully they don’t have security cameras in that section… Anyway, yay for the import book store!

One of the things I like most about this series is also one of the things that annoys me most about it: there are a lot of storylines going on at once. This means, that as in the case of this instalment, something that started in book one, will be continued on in book four.

This also means that there’s a lot of head hopping between the characters in the book. I think that this sometimes distracts from the main story line, but that’s probably just because I’m impatient, and when there’s a cliff hanger at the end of one chapter, and the beginning of the next switches to another person/storyline, I just get annoyed and want to go back to the other person.

But this also happens to me if I’m reading a book that has stuff from two people’s points of view – you know two separate story’s that intercepts somehow. I always end up liking one character more and skimming the other.

I guess that’s what happens here too – the first time I read them, I skim the stuff about the bad guys and John and whoever, and skip to the parts about the main characters being focused on in the book. When I reread them I then read the whole thing.

I think I’m just impatient. If this whole series was finished and published (and I knew what was going to happen to everyone), I would definitely say this was its main strength. It’s actually a series, not just a bunch a books about the same characters. In fact, it could all be one book and work just as well.

At first I was disappointed when I found out that this book was about Butch, because I never really liked his character that much. I don’t know why – I guess he just annoyed me for no real reason. But I did end up liking him a lot here and I thought that the story was more interesting because it was something that had been building for a long time, and really bought together everything that had happen so far and pointed towards what’s going to happen next.

Typically, the publisher was evil and put an extract from the next one at the end.

I hate that! Once I start reading something, I just want to read the whole thing (which I guess means their sneaky marketing ploy works!)… yeah, I really am impatient.

The next ones about V. It’s called Lover Unbound* and will be published 2nd October this year. Thank God (or the Scribe Virgin, I guess) for the six month publishing schedule!

On that note, I do wonder at how many she had written before the first was published. Because if she didn’t have the first three done, she must be a bloody quick writer: this book was almost 500 pages.

Oh well, however she does it, she should keep doing it because these books are great. And very funny. (Without me wanting to kill any of the characters for being annoying nit wits.)

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* Which begs the question: do series with the cute tie-in names ever get sick of having to have the cute tie-in name? What happens when the run out of things they can use? Will one of the books have to be called “Lover We’ve Run Out Of Possibilities”? Actually, that’s not too bad... hmmm....