10/14/11

Review: Immortal Beloved - Cate Tiernan

GENRE: Young Adult – Fantasy, Romance
FORM: AudioBook
NARRATOR: Kelly Lintz
SERIES: Immortal Beloved Series – Book 1

SYNOPSIS:
Nastasya is an immortal who has spent the last stretch of her life partying and living the life of luxury and ease. She has not let herself really feel anything much more than the daily party and whatever felt good at that moment for a very long time. When one of best friend uses magick to torture and forever ruin the life of a human and his family, something within Nasty clicks on and she suddenly has a feeling of fear and foreboding. She hunts down a women she met a long time ago, River, who told Nasty to find her if she ever wanted something more. As it turns out, River has a flock of immortals living at her “retreat” learning to seek good instead of dark or just find themselves. Now on a quest to separate who she is from who she was and who she has become, Nasty’s life is suddenly filled with daily tasks, life lessons and brief yet annoying encounters with the sexy Reyne. But as more and more of her past secrets are revealed, the more danger Nastasya seems to be in. Even someone at River’s Edge wants her dead.

REVIEW: At first I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like this book. The words were very captivating even from the beginning, I was just afraid that I wasn’t going to like where the story was headed. I held on a little bit longer, and a little bit longer, and just fell in love with this book all together!

Nastasya is a very easy character to like, she’s very funny, witty, sarcastic, and messed up. Her person (appearance, behavior, etc) is so current that there were times it was hard to imagine her hundreds of years before. It seemed like many of the immortals at River’s Edge still had an almost old fashioned feel about them, but Nastasya seemed 100% in this century. However, I felt like her internal conflicts were dead on realistic for an immortal with baggage. She makes you want to be her friend, and definitely not be her enemy. I loved the still budding something that she’s got going on with Reyne, and look forward so much to seeing that cultivate a bit further.

I really enjoyed the past/present scenes. Sometimes when books flash from present to past and back again it’s hard to follow, or you start getting things confused. I think it’s especially hard when you’re listening to an audiobook. There are times that I just don’t look forward to flashbacks. Most of the time those are books where I am more interested in what is happening in the present and am thinking “nooooo….I don’t want more back story!” With Immortal Beloved, I craved the back story almost as much as the present, and it was presented in such a way that it was not confusing at all, even if you pick up the book in the middle of a passage somewhere.

And my absolute favorite part of this book; I loved, loved, loved the realistic view of what it might like to be immortal. I think that this concept is so popular right now, and is glorified and made to look pretty, but in reality being immortal has some very bad repercussions, and consequences, and can me a very lonely thing, especially if you have no purpose or goal. Plus, there is an eternity to hold on to pain and terror if you don’t learn to keep moving forward. There are many people who are unhappy with their life now, imagine them if they had to live for eternity. In this I was always looking forward to River’s voice of wisdom.

And, because it just can’t all be peaches and cream perfect, the one disappointment of the book for me; I was really hoping for more end drama. The scenario that played out was so much the obvious option that I had dismissed it, thinking it would be something so much more unexpected or shocking. Obviously it doesn’t ruin the awesomeness of this book…

Props to the narrator, Kelly Lintz, for an amazing job with the narration and voices…sometimes that is half the battle of an audiobook!

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