ARC Review: Songbird by Jaymin Eve

I was really excited to read Songbird by Jaymin Eve even though I had never read anything by her before. I was so intrigued by the blurb and I loved the idea of such a kick ass heroine. I don't think I have ever seen a heroine that was an underground cage fighter, and I was looking forward to really seeing such an empowering female as the lead. But while I did enjoy parts of this story, I also thought that this one was pretty unrealistic and it drove me sort of nuts after awhile. I kept waiting for things to come back around to what the blurb had promised, but unfortunately this one just fell flat for me and continued to decline as the story progressed.

Melodee Lee has been on her own since she was thirteen. She is now twenty-three and supports herself by being an underground cage fighter. After winning a fight, she heads to Syracuse and looks to find a place to stay for awhile. She ends up getting a ride from a neighbor when a storm approaches only to get into a car accident along the way. Her neighbor and the driver of the car that hit them are killed leaving Melodee to figure out what to do with the baby that she found in the other car. When she sees the handsome Nathan approaching, she agrees to go with him to his place in order to get out of the storm with the baby. They hit it off right away and both will do anything to take care of the child. Soon they are falling in love with each other and the baby that they have named Jewel. But with Nathan on the track to become a professional basketball player and Melodee's trust issues, can they find a way to make things work? What happens when someone from Nathan's past comes back and threatens both Melodee and Jewel?

I liked Melodee and Nathan. I thought that they were both sweet and that they worked well together. Nathan was beyond great and was such a genuine guy. He could have been arrogant because of how he was raised and yet he was so caring and kind. He couldn't have been more patient or more perfect. Melodee was strong and was definitely a fighter, but she had a lot of trust issues and insecurities from her upbringing. I liked seeing her with Nathan and learning to let him and his family in. But I do feel that it was really rushed. I thought that they definitely had chemistry and a connection, but I still feel like it was pretty much insta-love. I did like them together though, and I thought that they made a great couple and were really good for one another.

My biggest problem with this story was that it was not realistic at all. With Nathan and Melodee both being twenty-three, him in school on the way to a pro career and her being an underground cage fighter with no schooling I thought that the events with the baby were not believable at all. I felt like it was all excused because of Nathan's family's wealth and fame, and I just didn't like the way that everything happened and the speed of it. I also felt like for as much as Melodee started off as a badass, she quickly lost her edge and this book just took a completely different turn. The blurb really leads you to believe that this is about cage fighting and basketball and these two athletes falling for one another and adjusting to a new set of circumstances and life together. But it ended up being so different from that and I thought that it kind of lost it's way from what the blurb had led the reader to believe. I liked Melodee and Nathan together, but I just felt like this wasn't the story that I had been expecting at all. I also felt like there were times that the phrasing of things was strange and that at times the story seemed to jump around a bit with things coming out of nowhere. I will say that the characters in this story were definitely the highlight, and I really loved all of the Sinclair brothers. I would definitely be interested in seeing more of all of them, and hope that the future books in this series don't have the same problems as this one did for me.

**ARC provided by YA Bound Book Tours**

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | B&N | Book Depository |