This RITA® Reader Challenge 2013 review was written by Molly. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Best Paranormal Romance category.

The summary:      No one patches up the incoming wounded like Dr. Petra Robichaud. Recruited by the gods for her uncanny medical skills, she’s the best M*A*S*H surgeon in the army. Along with a nosy guard sphinx,vegetarian werewolf, and otherparanormal paramedics, she bandages soldiers who are built like Greek gods (literally). But when one sexy immortal ends up on her operating table—half dead and totally to-die-for—Petra’s afraid she’ll lose her patient and her heart…

Commander Galen of Delphi is one gorgeous but stubborn demi-god. When his spirit tries to slip out of his fatally wounded body, Dr. Petra has to slip it back in—unwittingly revealing her ability to see ghosts. Now that Galen knows her secret, he’s convinced she’s part of an ancient prophecy. If the oracles are right, Petra could lead Galen’s army to peace. And if he seduces her on the way to hell and back? Heaven knows—all’s fair in love and war…

And here is Molly's review:

I really wanted to like Imortally Yours. I did. It had so much of what I look for in a paranormal romance. Mythology. A smart heroine with a dark secret. A sexy alpha male hero. Seriously, these are all like catnip to me. But try as I might I just. . . didn’t like it.

The story is set in an army hospital (think the tv show M*A*S*H of which I suspect the author is a fan). It’s a unique premise with a lot of fun side characters and great potential. The heroine, Petra, is a mortal doctor working in the unit and Galen, the hero, is a demi-god whose life she saves. He insists that she is the answer to a prophecy that will signal the end of the unending war and she insists she’s not but boy, isn’t he hot and sexy? And that’s pretty much all we have for the first half of the book.

The pacing in the book is really out of whack. We spend the first half with Petra and Galen having the same conversation over and over. To wit:

He: You are the prophecy! This is fate!

She: Nope, I’m totally not, stop saying that.

He: You are. It’s fate I’m here. You have to have hope. Peace is on the way.

She: Lalalala not listening or believing for reasons I refuse to say!

He: I am sexy, heroic and slightly brooding.

She: Well that is true.

The smooch. Someone interrupts them. End scene.

 

And that’s all we get for 100+ pages. We don’t know why Petra is so frightened of being the subject of the prophesy, other then if the gods find out about her gift to see the dead then she’ll be executed. But she goes the entire novel hiding it with ease and other then a brief scene at the beginning it doesn’t really seem to come up, so the whole excuse is a bit of a red herring. We don’t know why Galen is so certain that she is the prophesied one. And that is a big issue I have with the book. I am not a huge fan of first person narrative, because I like being able to get in the hero’s head. I like knowing his motivations and getting insight into his thoughts and attraction to the heroine. In a lot of books it’s not a huge deal, just a personal preference but here it would have been really nice to know what the heck was going on in Galen’s head. It seemed like there was a lot of stuff we were missing out on that would have really added to the story. When Petra and Galen interacted I felt a bit like I’d walked in on the middle of a conversation and had no idea what was going on.

To be brutally honest, if I hadn’t been reviewing the book for this website I would have DNFed at least twice. The first time was about halfway through, while Galen is trying to win Petra over by sucking up to her friends in the camp. I think it’s supposed to show the reader that he was more then just a soldier, that he could be kind and charming and cared about people. The problem is that Petra doesn’t see it that way; she’s just annoyed that he’s being pushy and since I can only see Galen from her perspective I became annoyed with him. He wasn’t charming, just kind of petty and childish. By the time Petra came around I was done with him.

The second time was towards the climax and I can’t explain it without spoilers. So, this paragraph is spoleriffic and if you’re not into that kind of thing skip to the next one. Just the spoiler addicts left? Cool. So we find out the reason Petra doesn’t want to be the prophecy girl is that she already tried to make the prophecy come true and in trying to rush things caused a hurricane that killed her father and destroyed her home town, New Orleans. That’s right, our heroine caused Hurricane Katrina. Had I been reading a paper book I’d have thrown it at this point. As it was I had to get up and make a cup of coffee before I could keep reading. I’m all for adding real life cultural touches to paranormal stories. It can ground the narrative and give the reader touchstones in fantastic worlds. But to use a major disaster, that killed hundreds of real people and that people are still recovering from, to give your heroine a tragic back story is just. . . I know it can be done and done well but the way it was handled here sat wrong with me, I’ll leave it at that.

Anyway, spoiler free time. There are other issues I had, but they’re mostly nitpicks. Everything that happens is fated, to the point where the heroine herself questions whether she has any free will.

Frankly, I had the same question. I don’t mind a little bit of “we were meant to be” but it got a little ridiculous here. The mythology is a bit of a kitchen sink that didn’t entirely work for me and the ending feels rushed and out of left field. A couple side plots get dropped but since this is the first in a trilogy I can’t complain.

There were a lot of good parts. The side characters are fun and interesting and for the most part intersect with the main plot well. Petra is an interesting character, smart, funny and real. She’s brave when she should be and cautious when reasonable. There were no TSTL moments, which are deal breakers for me. The love scenes were scorching and well written. I really wanted to like Galen, but it never clicked. It’s not an awful book by any means but for a book voted one of the best of the year I expected far more.

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