ARC Review: Ardeur by Danielle Gavan

I was really looking forward to reading this book. It seemed like an interesting plotline, plus it was a reunion story which are my favorite. Unfortunately I just didn't like this book. It was just so all over the place. It had a lot of promise but in the end it just fell flat for me. I actually wasn't even able to read it all the way through. It just became too much.

Ardeur Lisle, sees dead people, literally. As a child she would have conversations with them and this caused a lot of problems between her parents and her. They really never cared for her and everyone around her treated her as if she was a problem child. The only person she ever felt a connection with was Brody. Brody was a boy she went to school with and happened to be the only one ever to be nice to her. Years later, after her parents sold her to she still thinks of Brody. She desperately wants to reconnect with him but is unable to get away from the people who have bought her and are using her as a weapon.

Brody has always thought of Ardeur and what has become of her. He desperately wants to find her. When he gets out of the Army it's the first thing on his mind. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about her. When Brody is in an alley and sees a woman get it by a car he immediately tries to save her. Unbeknownst to him at the time, it's actually Ardeur. When he realizes it's her he can barely let her out of his sight.

When Ardeur wakes up from her accident at the Abbey she doesn't know what to think. She's scared and not very trusting towards others. When she meets the Angels of the Abbey and they begin to explain everything to her, and begin to treat her just like anyone else, she immediately opens up to them. This is where I started to have issues with the story. Ardeur spends her entire life not being able to trust anyone, and has pretty much been living out of a backpack for the last few years and for her to suddenly be able to trust them like they were long lost friends was just a bit much for me to believe.

Then walks in Brody. After Ardeur accident he finds the abbey and goes to try and talk to her and find out what's been going on for the last twenty years. Instantly they both connect and become inseparable. And after only a short time together they become engaged. I just did not buy this at all. They briefly knew each other as kids and for them both to instantly fall in love, I'm just not buying it. I get that Ardeur held on to the memory of the one person who was ever nice to her, but I just didn't understand Brody's reasoning. I think if we would have been able to see them grow to love each other, then maybe it would have been believable. I just didn't get that they both instantly fell in love.

There were a lot more issues that I had with this story that finally made me put the book down. I've tried to pick it back up, but I honestly just can't. There was just too much going on with this book and I just found too much of hit hard to follow or believe. It's really sad, because like I said before--this story just had so much potential to be great.

**ARC copy provided by Bewitching Blog Tours**

RATING:

DNF

Danielle Gavan Giveaway Winner

Congratulations to:

Latisha D. 

On winning an eBook copy of Ardeur from Danielle Gavan

Winner has been contacted via email. Thank you to all that participated. =)

Guest Post with Author Danielle Gavan and Giveaway

Today I would like to welcome author Danielle Gavan to the blog. Danielle is currently on tour promoting her book Ardeur. So please give a warm welcome to Danielle!

Hi Danielle, thanks for having me on your blog today. I thought readers might be interested to know what books I, as a writer, can’t get enough of as a reader. Mostly, my tastes run toward paranormal books and take a short jaunt into the historical/time travel/romance genre.

My bookshelf contains the entire Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, as well as the spinoff Lord John books. They’ve all been read several times, some of them so much their dust jackets are tattered and I’ve had to tape the pages back into the spines. I love these books. Diana might take seven years to write one novel but, they’re absolutely worth the wait. Her characters come alive, and the way she weaves the storyline together sucks you right into the book. When I get bored with the whole vamp/shifter/paranormal stuff, this is where I turn. There’s nothing like a little Jamie Fraser to put my brain in a happy place. 

Another author I love to read is Laurell K. Hamilton. Whenever a new book comes out in either her Merry Gentry or Anita Blake series’ I get it and plough through the pages. It takes a few days to read them from cover to cover (thank you domestic servitude… um, bliss) but that only makes the enjoyable experience last that much longer. 

While Laurell’s kick-butt heroines and their harems of men are great, sometimes I like to flip the tables. For that I turn to Gena Showalter and her Lords of The Underworld. Those males are worth staying up passed my bedtime and stumbling bleary eyed through my morning chores. (What do you mean the kids need pants on to go to school? They can’t go in their jammies? Well…rats.) Yep, definitely worth it. 

Occasionally, I venture into the YA pool for something less sexy and more on the angsty side. I haven’t found many I like but the few include Kelly Armstrong’s trilogy (The Reckoning, The Awakening and The Summoning). I’ve read some of Ms. Armstrong’s other work (Women of the Underworld) and can honestly say I love her work. 

Another YA series I’ve enjoyed is The House of Night by P.C. and Kristin Cast. Great characters and story. This is another series for which I won’t pass up buying the newest release. 

There you have it, some of my favorite books to read. What’s on your bookshelf that you can’t do without?