Audio Book Review: Cursed By Fire By Danielle Annett

Cursed By Fire
(Blood & Magic #1)
By Danielle Annett 

Narrator: Nicole Poole
Length: 5 hours and 52 minutes

Blood is going to spill...

I just hope it won’t be mine.

After two weeks of searching, I found the seven-year-old I'd been hired to find too late. His body broken and discarded. Dead.

My boss doesn't want me to hunt down his killers. It's too dangerous.

But the Pacific Northwest Pack steps in, hiring me to bring the bastards to justice.

Turns out the kid was half shifter. And shifters don't abandon their own.

In a search that takes me through the maze of shifter hierarchy and the depths of the paranormal underworld, these killers underestimate how determined I am to mete out their punishment. Vigilante justice is the only kind these people understand.

Yes, blood will spill. And I'm determined it will be theirs.

Available At: | Amazon | Audible | iBooks | 
My Review:

This was an average story that made it so time passed a little faster for me while listening to it. My main issue: Everything felt only surface deep. There wasn't much substance to anything or anyone in this series. The world building felt off, in a way that everything was explained so loosely and on the surface that nothing ever felt real (if that makes any kind of sense).

Aria as an interesting character, but she would make really dumb choices considering how her world is running amok with paranormal creatures that only relying on their respective leaders to control and lead. I also didn't understand her out of character infatuation (in the second half of the book) with the men in her life.

Hunter was the one character I was starting to like. He was loyal, reliable and proved he cared about Aria throughout the story. Though that was about it. It's mentioned he's, in essence, this bad*ss mercenary, but it's not showcased. It's just there for convenience and plot sake. 

The kind of sorta love triangle with the guy who has powers similar to hers (whose name I forget) was creepy from the start. He had to almost strongarm her into meeting for coffee (which ended up happening because coincidences is totally a realistic plot choice) like he was entitled to her in some way and it only got worse with the end. I don't understand how Aria felt anything for him after all that.

I enjoyed how menacing and villainous the big-bad-powerful-leaders were. Every one of them had ulterior motives for whatever the situation they were dealing with was. It made them a few of the more entertaining characters in this story.

In conclusion, everything felt shallow and that's what ultimately made me not love this story. I guess it's a good thing, considering I only found out about the problems this story/author/series has with copying specific elements of stories from other authors (allegedly) after the fact. 

The Audio Book:

I've learned to love Nicole Poole's narrations! The voices (male and female) and accents were amazing. 

My Rating: