Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, #1)

by Sarah Fine

[Angie]

I was pretty excited to finally get to Sanctum, but sadly, I found it mostly boring and at times annoying. Lela has bounced from foster home to foster home, but now she's been settled for a year. Her latest foster mother is great, she has an awesome best friend, and she's got a college scholarship! But then Nadia commits suicide and Lela can't let her go, especially after she starts having visions of where her friend wound up. Nadia feels like it's up to her to save Nadia from that dark place, even if it means giving up her own life.

Most of why I was excited about Sanctum was because it was about friendship! I was eager to see this tight bond between Lela and Nadia, and witness what Lela would go through to save her. Unfortunately, I never became invested in this friendship. They've only known each other for a year, but Lela seems almost obsessed with Nadia. It didn't feel like a believable friendship, like it was just quickly developed so that we could get to the meat of the story. I also didn't believe Lela getting a tattoo of Nadia's face on her arm. Face tattoos are creepy in the first place, and this one just felt like a convenient way for Lela to have a picture of Nadia to show around while she looks for.

As for the plot, Sanctum is of course Lela ending up at the Suicide Gates, entering the city, and looking for Nadia. It's a rescue mission, which could have been great, if I cared about Lela and Nadia. And if Lela didn't act like she knew the best way to go about saving her friend. I cannot stand when a character goes to a new place and acts like they know better than the people who have been there awhile. Whenever someone tells Lela what the best course of action is, she disagrees, and of course everything goes wrong. Then she's convinced that she's doing the right thing and they tell her NO, that's now how it works, and she just doesn't listen. There probably wouldn't have been any conflict if Lela would just shut up and listen, but it made it very hard to me to feel bad for her.

Then there's the matter of this romance. Obviously Lela falls in love with the first hot guy she sees, Malachi. He's leader of the Guards, and he's suppose to be so scary, but Lela is immediately drawn to him, as he is to her. Then Lela, who has had terrible things happen to her in foster care and cannot stand to be touched, suddenly wants his hands all over her. I don't think so. This girl wouldn't even hug her BFF who she was willing to die for, but it's totally okay for this sexy stranger to be all over her? It was insta-love wrapped up in the healing power of love.

Sanctum has a really great premise, but a really annoying execution. Lela just jumps into this rescue mission without any thought. She doesn't think anything is weird about her having visions, and doesn't even consider if her visions are even real. She just goes for it and ignores those who know better than her. She also doesn't consider what getting Nadia out of there means. She could very well end up somewhere worse, or completely disappear. Lela doesn't know anything! It was just frustrating.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.