Review: Eternal Soul

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

From Goodreads:
Reign Elise La' Roche is savvy in business, evasive in love, and private and protective when it comes to her personal life. Born in the flavorful city of New Orleans, she is also the descendant of powerful hoodoo magick, age-old African mysticism and dark family secrets. This Creole beauty is content living a charmed existence; that is, until a strategic retaliation against her father changes her life forever. Reign is suddenly tossed into a whirlwind of betrayal, magick and the awakening of a whole new world where nothing appears to be in her control.To protect and preserve her lineage, Reign soon learns that she must embrace the one thing she'd fought years denying...a bloodline of ancient power. And with time, Reign evolves from a successful artist and gallery owner, to a woman of unlimited means and potential with one climactic goal: vengeance.

I am quite disappointed with this book. Too high expectations when going in played the most part in this, but still. The book took entirely another direction than I thought it would.
Following Reign's everyday life had its high moments, but mostly it was a bit too slow paced for me. The main problem was that I couldn't get into the plot, even though I really tried. This has been a worrying trait in the past few months for me.

Reign's character develops with a steady pace throughout the book and Eternal Soul is only the beginning for her when considering the cliff-hanger the book ended with. But that's the thing, she develops, everyone else stays put. Like all the side-characters are there only for her. When they walk off the stage, they disappear. They don't have their own lives and don't feel as alive as Reign does. Her friends are only there 'on demand', only when she needs them.

Afterwards, it struck me. This is one of those books that you either love or strongly dislike (I think 'hate' might be a bit too strong of a word here). If you like romance in urban-fantasy setting, this book might be just for you. I enjoy those from time to time, but with this one, the romance happened too fast and it felt a little forced. The book would've been fine without it as well.

The sequel Eternal Love is out already, and if the name hints anything, there are major developments in the romance field for the characters. Eternal Soul was a beginning, but without reading the sequel, the reading experience wasn't the best one.