Review of Guin the Emerald by Louisa Kelley
This was another fun book in Kelley’s Shift series. While I enjoyed the first book, I felt like this one was even better. While this could be read as a standalone, I would suggest reading Fianna the Gold first. There are multiple characters that are in both books including one character that has a lot of growth and change. I don’t think this book would have the same impact if you didn’t start at the beginning.
This type of series is what I would call fun and lighthearted fantasy. Half of the series takes place on Earth –Portland- with the rest taking place in the magical land of the Dracans. And as you may guess from that name, it means Dragon shifters! I’m such a geek for anything dragons, plus I love shifters, put them together and you have a concept I love. Due to part of this taking place on Earth, in current times, and just the lighthearted feel of these, I think this would be a good series for new fans to the fantasy genre. These books just feel easy and fun and I think they are very approachable because of that.
I found the romance in this book to be better than in book one. This book stars the one character I was most interested in, Guin, and another character that I was really on the fence about. I’m being vague here for spoiler reasons but I did not think this romance would be easy to make work, but Kelley somehow did.
The one thing I found that kept me from rating this higher is I wanted a little more action. I felt that the few big plot points of the story were resolved a little too quickly/easily for me. The action parts are fun in this series and I just wanted a little more. On the good side, this book had even more dragon goodness than the first book so I was really happy with that. Even though I could have used more action, excitement, and peril, I enjoyed reading the whole book and was happy with the pace.
I believe there is one more book coming. This series seems to revolve around three dragon sisters so I’m assuming we will get at least one more book. I’m glad because after two books I’m starting to get attached to the characters. This isn’t a wow series for me, but it’s fun and enjoyable. I mean who can say no to more dragons. 3.75 Stars.
An ARC was given to me for a review.
