Review of ‘Avenging Avery’ by Sheri Lewis Wohl
I thought this was a so-so wlw paranormal book. It had a good premise but the execution was lacking. I was expecting high action mixed with intrigue and some romance. Instead, it was pretty low action for a wlw paranormal book and the other parts didn’t work so well for me either. I still felt like this deserved an average rating because there were parts that were entertaining, it just was not what I was hoping for. I seem to be very up and down when it comes to Wohl’s books. They don’t always land for me but with my love for paranormal, I have to always give her books a chance.
One of my issues right off the bat was having three main characters: a woman vampire Isa, a deputy sheriff Jeni, and George, the main “bad guy”. While I was fine reading about Isa and Jeni, I quickly grew tired of being in the headspace of George. He was not a very impressive villain and I found a lot of his parts to be repetitive. George is a main character so we are in his head just as much as the others. The problem is he was just not interesting enough to take up so much book time. I found myself skimming some of his parts searching for important plot substance. I don’t like to skim books but I was so done with him.
Another problem I had was that plot threads started but then went nowhere. There was going to be a big showdown with a secondary character. I was excited about this action-packed fight. Instead, it happens off-camera so to say and we are told about it later. It was a letdown for sure. Also, the characters hatch this big plan that they put all this work in, well let’s just say we never get to find out what that plan actually was. And lastly one of the human characters, at the end of the book, channels some power right out of the blue. What the heck was that? I don’t know because it is never explained and I just don’t get why it was in the book. I’m hoping it was a mistake in my ARC copy and that it will be taken out. Maybe it was something that Wohl thought about putting in but erased most of it and forgot to delete that one part. I don’t know it just made no sense at all.
With an action paranormal book, I did not expect the romance to be really deep. However, I did expect more than what was in here. This is an enemies to lovers romance and it took so long to get past enemies -which I felt was realistic- that it made the romantic connection pretty unbelievable. I didn’t really see what changed it from hate to love. Hate to friendship sure, but I didn’t see anything past that. There are no sex scenes in this book. I was fine with that in this case but I really needed a stronger connection between the mains.
I did like that a sheriff knew about the paranormal world and I liked the premise of enemies coming together mostly for revenge. While the action was pretty low key, there still were some entertaining moments and I liked reading the parts with Jeni and Isa, even though I wanted more. I wanted more of them -less of George- and more from them.
While this is one I can’t really recommend, I would not say stay away either. It’s an average paranormal book in my opinion that could have been quite good with a few changes. If you would like to try a book by Wohl, I would recommend ‘The Talebearer’ instead.
A copy was given to me for an honest review.
Avenging Avery
I thought this was a so-so wlw paranormal book. It had a good premise but the execution was lacking. I was expecting high action mixed with intrigue and some romance. Instead, it was pretty low action for a wlw paranormal book and the other parts didn’t work so well for me either. I still felt like this deserved an average rating because there were parts that were entertaining, it just was not what I was hoping for. I seem to be very up and down when it comes to Wohl’s books. They don’t always land for me but with my love for paranormal, I have to always give her books a chance.
URL: 3 stars, Enemies to lovers, Police
Author: Sheri Wohl
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