I just LOVED this book. So much. When I finished the first book in this series I said that I needed to read a little further into the series until I could make up my mind about how much I liked the book. There seemed to be a lot more to be developed and revealed until I could decide. The first book seemed to focus a lot on the love triangle between Calla, Shay, and Ren. There was a lot more to the story, but the majority of the book focused on Calla and her torn feelings between Ren and Shay. That was a fun book to read, but this second book took all that was great in the first book and deepened everything, making it so much more powerful for me as a reader. In this second book Calla has made her choice. She saved Shay and ran away from her destiny to be united with Ren as the Alpha couple of the new wolf pack. I knew, as I read the events of the final chapters of the first book, that there would be major consequences for her decision, and it was not going to be pretty. That proved to be true in this book. Calla and Shay find themselves in the midst of a Searcher lair, for lack of a better word. They hear the truth of who the Guardians have been serving for all those years, and it throws Calla into a bit of chaos as she has to come to terms with what that true history says about who she is as a person. All of her foundation has come crumbling down, and it isn’t a pleasant experience for her. Being Alpha of her pack has given Calla stability and certainty about her future, but now all of that is gone. She is with Shay, who obviously wishes that Calla could just move on with him as her partner/mate. However, as Calla tries to give herself to Shay she finds that she just can’t ignore her ties to her fellow wolves and pack. She has to rescue them.
I will not go into any of the details of the plot. It is full of action and drama that kept me reading as quickly as my little brain would let me go. I will talk about the themes of this book that fascinated me as I read. There is the over-arching theme throughout these first two books in the series that deals with free choice. The Guardians are given everything they need by the Keepers — except their freedom. It seems like a good enough deal to the Guardians, but Shay helps Calla to see that there is opportunity that she is being denied. Even though, in this book, Calla has chosen to create her own destiny, she feels the uncertainty and the fear that go along with having to make choices for oneself, without the strong-handed guidance of the Keepers. Although she doesn’t really have any desire to go back to the Keepers, she is reeling in this new role that is independent of their meddling. I found this storyline to be very interesting. Freedom can be scary and un-nerving at times, but the ability to make our own choices and face the punishments or rewards for those choices is essential to our growth as individuals.
Calla also has to deal with the fallout from her decision to leave the Union ceremony. She may have gotten away and found shelter with the Seekers, but her pack remained, and they face horrible reprisals for her actions. I will not go into detail as to what those reprisals are, but they are horrible. It destroys all that was Calla’s world in the first book — sometimes through physical death, and other times through psychological death. Those Keepers are no joke. It seems like the Guardians should find it obvious that running from them would be a desirable alternative. Just as sometimes we cannot understand why an abused spouse would stay with their abuser despite the violence, in this case it is hard to understand why the Guardians would stay with Keepers who manipulate, murder, and terrorize them. However, the Guardians are trapped by the history they have been told where the Keepers are the good guys and the Seekers are the bad guys. They know no other way to live, and as one character explains later in the novel, ‘Sometimes the devil you know is more desirable than the devil you don’t.’ Calla, however, has to work through her intense feelings of guilt as she finds the damage done to her pack because of her decision. It may have been the right decision to make, but that doesn’t make it any easier for her. There is still more to work through in this department, so I’m looking forward to reading more about it in the third book of this series.
Then there is the still existing love triangle of Calla, Shay, and Ren. I’ll admit that in the first book I initially was pushing for Shay to win out. Ren seemed to represent all the old-school traditions that were holding Calla and preventing her from exercising her free will, while Shay was freedom and self-determination. However, somewhere around two-thirds through that first book my feelings about Ren began to change. I saw that he was just as trapped by this world as Calla was. Yet still, he obviously loved her, and he was choosing to treat her with love and respect — not as an object as his father treated women of the pack. So now in book two Ren is absent. He is facing the consequences of Calla’s flight and his cover-up for her. It seems as if Shay has won this battle. I couldn’t help but feel wrong as Calla kissed Shay in the beginning chapters of the book. It just felt wrong, but it was hard to know exactly why. Calla also seemed to feel this because she always stopped Shay after finding herself feeling as if she was betraying Ren. Nothing was going to get resolved in the relationship department until Calla figured out what had happened to Ren. Well, that happens, and it isn’t a happy ending. I won’t say what Calla finds, but it leaves her an emotional wreck. There are big revelations along with major heartache, and the story continues. Unfortunately, at this moment Calla turns to Shay for comfort, and let me just say, it is never a good idea to make permanent decisions about your life and love in the midst of emotional turmoil. It’s never going to turn out right for either party. This happens at the end of the book, so there is still more fallout to come from this hasty, and, I might add, stupid, decision by Calla. I sure hope that Calla has not made a mess of things for herself. Despite all the emotional mess of the end of this book, I am firmly on Ren’s side. I am rooting for him and his future. I am hoping that he will end up with Calla. Shay was okay in this book, but some of the time he seemed awfully selfish. Ren just seems to be more mature and ultimately better for Calla. I feel like Shay was the lifeline that Calla needed to escape the prison her life as a Guardian had created, and I feel like she will be essential to Shay’s success as the Scion. However, I feel like both of them would be better suited to other people. I really hope that that is the direction that Cremer is going for her final book in this trilogy. Please.
So, this was a great second book to this series, and I enjoyed reading all of it. The playful banter between the Seekers was a tad annoying to read at the beginning of the book, but I think that was because I already knew Calla and was itching to have her get out there and make things right for her pack. Hearing the talking between the newly introduced characters of the Seeker group was slow to read at first. However, once I got to know these characters better, I did enjoy their relationships with one another and the ways that their lives compared with the lives of the Keepers and Guardians. I am looking forward to reading the final book in the series. It has been a fun one to read.
- Goodreads rating – 4.11
- REVIEW – Melissa