Once Burned (Night Prince, #1)

by Jeaniene Frost

[Berls]

3.5 stars

I was SO EXCITED to read Vlad's books. He's been a standout character for me since I met him in the Cat and Bones series, so I was ready to get to know him better and spend some time really in his world. I'm sorry to say that while I did enjoy Once Burned, I was disappointed.

Okay so let me just get the disappointments out of the way. First of all, unlike the books where we get to know Mencheres and Charles better thanks to getting their POV, Once Burned only gives us Leila's POV. And it's a great one (more on that later) but it resulted in my second major disappointment -- I do not feel like I learned ANYTHING about Vlad in this book. Like there was literally no character development for him. He's the same guy I knew him to be before going in. And yeah, if I hadn't read Cat and Bones already there's plenty of character development. But if you've read Cat and Bones (which I imagine most readers drawn to this book would have), you know him better already than Leila does by the end of the book... huge disappointment.

But it is still a 3.5 star read because while I was disappointed about Vlad, I was thrilled with Leila. She's a really complicated, fascinating character. Her abilities are unique -- I don't think I've ever encountered someone with quite her skillset in my UF reading -- and she is a very spunky character, loyal and fierce. And that's exactly the kind of woman Vlad needs. I'm looking forward to seeing their relationship develop (because they are far from at their HEA thus far) and I have a feeling future books will be exceptionally better on the Vlad front as their relationship unfolds.

The plot was also really great. Lots of action and mystery, with some fun twists and turns. Again, I didn't really learn anything knew here but it kept my attention and was a fun read. I buddy read with Anne and Lillian (Brandee was supposed to join me but I think I left her in the dust, sorry Brandee!). Anne gave it 4 stars and Lillian 5... so we were all over the place with our impressions!

I listened to this -- something I've tried not to do with the Cat and Bones series -- because I do not enjoy Tavia Gilbert's narration for Bones. I had heard her voice Vlad in a previous book though and thought it was pretty good, so I decided to give it a go and yeah, it was fine. She's not my favorite narrator for accents, but her voice works for Leila and Vlad. There was a couple of lines with Bones talking that made me cringe a little, but thankfully he wasn't in the book much so it worked out. And I was able to comfortably listen at my 2x speed.