Ashley
Written on Aug 5, 2018
My #1 issue with this book was with my expectations in regards to genre. I expected a fantasy/paranormal book, heavy on the Norse mythology. But honestly? This book reads like a contemporary romance. You can easily strip out all the Norse stuff and have the exact same story. It's basically about a cage fighter who winds up with this girl and circumstances happen to cause them to go on the run together. They meet up with some veterans, have a road trip, and romance follows. It completely reads like a contemporary romance with a small amount of thriller (on the run) stuff sprinkled in. That just wasn't what I expected at all. I expected a fantasy romance and it just didn't read like one. Even the on the run stuff was very contemporary - using social media and websites to plant false leads.
So in that sense it wasn't necessarily a bad book, it just deviated completely from my expectations. It didn't feel like a fantasy at all except they talked about Valkyries occasionally.
Two other smaller things of note:
1) It was a little bit cheesy. Kind of a "love conquers all" type thing.
2) They kept acting like being on the run was this huge deal and they were putting "so many lives at risk", but it was a little hard to take it seriously when we didn't see the person chasing them for like 95% of the book. It was just hard to feel really invested in how big of a deal it was when the threat was practically invisible.
Anyway if you like the sound of this book with all the fantasy elements stripped away, then go for it. It is kind of a fun contemporary romance and I loved the cast of characters they hooked up with. That was probably my favourite part of the book. It just sucked that I went into this book expecting a fantasy and I feel like it wasn't one at all. That really messed with my enjoyment.