Loyalty In the Shadows by Veronica Eden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒘𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚.
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏.
𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒂𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒖𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒑?𝘐𝘴𝘭𝘢
Thorne Point sunk its claws in me at a young age.
I refused to let its harsh truths snuff out my light.
When an attempt to kidnap me is stopped, I know they’ll never give up.
The city’s seedy underbelly won’t let me escape forever.
My only choice is to run into the arms of monsters for safety.
The Crows have a terrifying reputation, and Levi Astor lives up to it.
But my protective monster will never be worse than the ones who buried their ugliness deep in me.𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘪
𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘪 𝘈𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵.
Our unchallenged rule over this city is crumbling.
We’ll hunt down the ones behind this and make them pay.
𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦.
Guarding the senator’s daughter isn’t on my agenda, yet I couldn’t ignore her if I tried.
Sunshine might break through the shadows, but it will only illuminate what makes me a deadly monster.
Isla Vonn should run in the opposite direction instead of into my arms.
Because everyone fears the Leviathan in Thorne Point.Loyalty In the Shadows
Good book, bad audiobook!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙❤️💚💜
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎
Character development: 😊😄😘😍🥰
Narration: DNF – switched to kindle edition
Narration Type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Isla Vonn – Isla is best friends with Rowan from the first book in this series. Though unlike Rowan, Isla isn’t a scholarship student. Isla is from one of the wealthy families in Thorne Pointe. Her father is a senator who was involved in a mens club where the men paid to take the virginity of young girls. He took her to a dinner when she was fourteen, where she was drugged and then raped by someone her father knew. So, when someone tries to kidnap her at her college, Isla’s life changes completely. She doesn’t know if her father was somehow involved or why they wanted her.
The Hero: Levi Astor – He and his three best friends are known as the Crowned Crows of Thorne Point. They ran the night at Thorne Point. They have a bunch of underground revenue streams including underground fights, illegal casinos and a weekend nightclub called the Crows Nest. The Crows nest is not only a nightclub, but where they live as well. Levi is the muscle of the four friends. He has a lot of anger inside him stemming from when he and his mother were kidnapped when he was a child, which makes him the best fighter at the fight clubs. He works out whenever he has free time and has honed himself into a deadly assassin.
The Story: Isla has known the Crows since she was very young since they all went to elite private schools together. She was never really interested in Levi. He scared her a bit, so she stayed away. Though about a month ago, when she was at their club, she started seeing Levi in a different light and has had a crush on him ever since. So, when she is attacked in the parking garage at Thorne Point University and Levi saves her, she turns to him to help protect her.
This audiobook was told in multiple points of view via duet narration and was narrated by Jay Alder and Stephanie Rose. I didn’t like Jay Alder’s narration much. He sounds too old for the characters. He is also voicing all four of the crows and he doesn’t really do well at having different voices for different characters. He has his normal voice which he uses for Levi, and basically a yelling voice which he uses for all of the other guys and his voice for female characters is downright awful.
Stephanie Rose was nearly as bad; you could definitely tell she was reading. She had so many pauses between words, and she often emphasized the wrong words in a sentence. It drove me crazy. Her voice for male characters wasn’t bad, but the high, annoying voice she used for Rowan grated on my nerves. I ended up changing from the audiobook to the kindle edition, because I couldn’t take the narration anymore. The supporting characters were awesome also. I like all the guys in the Crowned Crows, they all have their own unique personalities and strengths.
I really liked both of these characters quite a bit. They both went through a trauma when they were young, and it affected them greatly. Both still struggled with PTSD from those events, including nightmares and flashbacks. Yet both of them dealt with their trauma and became stronger for it. Levi did it by making himself stronger, using training and making himself into someone who is dangerous and deadly. Isla put on a happy face in public and eventually decided to do things that make her truly happy.
This book turned out to be much better than the first book in the series. I think because we got to know all the characters more and I just liked the action and suspense much better in this one. I sometimes hate the second book in a trilogy or series because you just don’t know what will happen. You know it will end on a big cliffhanger, but the whole book is leading up to something that you know will probably go wrong for the characters. When what you really want is for them to kick butt and take names. Either way, the last quarter of the book had me on the edge of my seat.
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