Only One Opinion (Shadowfever)

Title: Shadowfever
Author: Karen Marie Moning
Publisher: Delacorte Press

Place in series: #5, final book

I somehow managed to NOT review any of the other Fever series books. I'm not sure how that happened. Life just gets ahead of you sometimes. But I'm here to talk a bit about Shadowfever, the final book in the Fever series.

First and foremost, this review will be spoilery to the other books in the Fever series. It's too difficult to review it without doing so, I apologize. The whole series carries my recommendation though, so if you enjoy paranormal romance, stories about the Fae, and spunky female MCs, you should probably go buy Darkfever, book 1 in the series.

Mac's world took a devastating turn at the end of Dreamfever. What a cliffhanger that was! Her protector, lover, and savior, the man who boldly proclaimed he would always be there to protect Mac, is no more. She's stuck in the Silvers, lost, with no hope and a bleak, Barrons-less future before her. Her grief knows no bounds. When the beast was slayed, so was Mac's heart. The grief that consumes her soon turns to something more: a single-minded, blind desperation to unmake the world... and make a new world where everything is perfect. Alina alive, Barrons alive, living with her parents, not a care in the world, everything pretty and pink. In order to do that, she must find it -The Book- before any of the others hunting it do, and she will do anything, anything, to find it and use it first.


Good gravy. Shadowfever was nothing like I expected. It was so much more! And yet, it was possibly too much. So much happened, I'm still trying to process it and wrap my head around it all. It could easily have been made into two books. So many emotional traumas and world-flips happened, combined with the non-stop action and plot twisting- it was a bit overwhelming.

Pros:
~ I loved the non-stop action and I loved the plot twisting! Nothing was as it seemed. Everything I thought I knew I was forced to reexamine. What a ride!

~ Mac is terrifying and stupid and brilliant and hilarious all in the span of a chapter or two. At times I wanted to slap her silly, I admit. And at others I thought she was pretty daft, but making progress so that was good. And she ended up okay, and that was important.

~The repressed feelings Mac has/had for Barrons are finally admitted to and accepted (can we all say hallelujah??).

~ We learn who was behind all the shenanigans.

~ Rowena gets to have her pie and eat it too.


Cons:
~ SO much happens. It's... I don't know. Two books worth, at least.

~ Some places felt rushed, some felt like they went on forever just to torture me because it was really unimportant stuff. Or it was Mac thinking the same things over and over again.

~ There was an abundance of info-dumping. I understand that as the final book, it was expected to be full and to wrap up all the loose threads, but holy moly.

~ My heart was broken, mended, broken again, broken some more, patched up, and by then I was so lost and confused emotionally, I couldn't keep up.

~ Not all of the big plotsies were resolved. I was left feeling a bit unsatisfied. There were questions that I'd wanted answers to from the start, and I'm still asking them. I had to Google and see if Shadowfever was really the last book, I felt that cheated, even though I knew it was when I picked it up.

~ Mac and Barrons' relationship is whack. True, there are some issues there, but dude. It's a relationship. It's all well and good that Mac finally owned up to her feelings, but, uhm, what about him? He said some stuff, and they got down and dirty, but that's about it. Yeah, he's alpha male protector and big and beefy and masculine. But doesn't she deserve to see the tender side? I feel like he regressed, and thus even though they finally Became Something, it's all kind of.... blah.

And now I realize that it wasn't as good as I thought it was. Heh. I was going to give Shadowfever 4 stars when I started writing this, but now that my thoughts are written out, it's pretty plain that the cons outweigh the pros.

And so,

3 out of 5 stars.

(Aside: The series is fantastic. I absolutely recommend the series. And while you're at it, Shadowfever, because things happen and you need to know about them. Just be prepared for the onslaught.)