The idea is this is interesting, I appreciate some shifters and vague magical references, but that’s kind of where my likes run out.

The romance is hard to buy. When the characters finally admit they have feelings for each other it feels pretty lackluster. I have no idea why either of them like each other people neither of them says why, not even to each other. I can get behind some fated mates but they need to at least like something about each other and be able to voice that, otherwise it feels empty and like they’re just lead by their genitals.

I didn’t like the spicy bits at all. It might’ve been just the fact that the way it was written doesn’t appeal to me or, more likely than not, it was because I didn’t really know anything about these characters. We didn’t really learn anything about them and thus I didn’t care about them. Asher is a rich dragon shifter with a complicated family, that’s literally all we know about him… we never even find out what he does for work. While Emma wasn’t any better as we only know that she was close to her grandfather and lives in his house. I can’t enjoy a sex scene with characters that I have zero emotional investment in.

The writing is a little bit awkward, like the way the characters speak doesn’t feel natural. Awkward writing I can ignore if I like the world and characters enough but it was hard to trudge through in this one.

The reveal about the grandfather was flat as hell. It didn’t match up to the level of guilt she was expressing, making the impact of the reveal feel empty.

While I really didn’t enjoy this book, I will keep reading the series to maybe find out about some unanswered questions from this book like what the things that came out of the portal was. I’m hopeful that this one just didn’t have good leads and the following books will be better. Fingers crossed!