Winner: Unchained: the Dark Forgotten by Sharon Ashwood (NAL/Signet Eclipse; Laura Cifelli, editor)
Finalists:
▪ Enemy Within by Marcella Burnard (Berkley; Leis Pederson, editor)
▪ A Highlander’s Homecoming by Melissa Mayhue (Pocket Books; Megan McKeever, editor)
▪ Immortal Sea by Virginia Kantra (Berkley Trade; Cindy Hwang, editor)
▪ Marked by the Moon by Lori Handeland (St. Martin’s Press; Jennifer Enderlin, editor)
▪ Rebel by Zoe Archer (Zebra Books; Megan Records, editor)
▪ Sins of the Heart by Eve Silver (HQN Books; Tara Parsons, editor)
▪ Unchained: the Dark Forgotten by Sharon Ashwood (NAL/Signet Eclipse; Laura Cifelli, editor)
▪ Water Bound by Christine Feehan (Jove; Cindy Hwang, editor)
I thought this book was incredibly good. I found the hero and heroine to be incredibly layered and the mystery was an actual mystery. Sure, some of the plot points lined up a little too conveniently (and others got left dangling), but I found most of the elements worked really well. And the hero and heroine were wonderful. Also, while the heroine’s daughter occasionally did plot moppet things, she was neither an exquisitely perfect, precocious child (who only exists in imagination) nor an unrelenting brat. She was a 10-year old who some real reasons to be angry at her mother and to be unhappy at her new school.
My cat jumped on my desk, landed on the keyboard, and submitted my last post too soon! I just wanted to add that while the heroine’s daughter in Unchained had reasons to be unhappy and sometimes slams doors or says, “I HATE YOU!”, she still loves being with her grandmother (her mother’s mother) and playing with her new niece. And underneath all of the drama and anger, she loves her mother very much—in other words, she acted like an actual 10-year old. I appreciated that.
So, while I have only read part of another book on that list, I’m not surprised this one won. I thought it was excellent.
Of all the books reviewed here, Unchained was the one that caught my interest. Haven’t read it yet, but seeing it won makes me that more interested.
Yeah! This is the one I picked to win. I love everything about The Dark Forgotten series, and as a matter of fact, just finished the latest installment, “Frostbound”.