{"id":185,"date":"2010-07-12T21:12:38","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T04:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/?p=185"},"modified":"2010-07-12T21:12:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T04:12:38","slug":"what-ive-read-lover-mine-by-jr-ward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/what-ive-read-lover-mine-by-jr-ward\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve Read- Lover Mine by JR Ward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I managed to break away from endless days of edits, workshops and contest judging to finally do a bit of reading. Of course the book in question was one I couldn\u2019t wait, yet dreaded reading. It was with great trepidation that I picked up JR Ward\u2019s latest Lover Mine<\/em>, from The Black Dagger Brotherhood<\/em> series.<\/p>\n

Those who know me are well aware that I have a love\/hate relationship with the Brothers. I love their world. I love their banter. I love the supporting characters.\u00a0 However something seems to go awry when one of them takes center stage. By the end of the book I\u2019m left with a \u201cuh, you weren\u2019t as cool as I thought,\u201d feeling. Yeah, even don\u2019t get me started on Phury.<\/p>\n

Which was why I was almost afraid to read John Matthew’s story. He has been the one character that has always drawn me back to the series, sometimes against my will. What would I do if he fell into the pit of \u201cI\u2019m not worthy,\u201d like the others did and couldn\u2019t crawl out? Well, he does, but not to the point of the other brothers.<\/p>\n

Lover Mine<\/em> follows Lover Avenged<\/em> where the evil and vile Lash has kidnapped Xhex in retaliation for her killing his symphath lover. His need for revenge turns into a twisted obsession when he recognizes Xhex as an adversary worthy of all his attentions. \u00a0John Matthew has given up hope that Xhex will ever be found again and takes his rage out on every lesser his comes across. After Xhex manages to free herself, she and John wade through a quagmire of uncertainty, despair, fear, love, revenge and self- loathing as they race to put an end to the harbinger of their torment.<\/p>\n

You can breathe a sigh of relief that John stays true to his honorable and devoted nature. He is truly a male of worth and even when his self confidence goes into the crapper, he still manages to find a reason to keep going. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Now Xhex on the other hand was interesting. She was still a badass warrior as always, but Ward kind of girlie\u2019d her up a bit, which struck me as odd. If this was the first I had read about her, I wouldn\u2019t have noticed it, but to me, Xhex always seemed like the anti-girl, a guy with female parts.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a bad thing to soften her, but it wasn\u2019t necessarily good either, just another \u201chuh\u201d moment. Yes, she went through a traumatic experience which could change her character, but Xhex\u2019s whole life was traumatic, why girl up now? Also her symphath nature seemed to be on the fritz, and she didn’t notice many of John’s emotions. He’s\u00a0mute,\u00a0he communicates mostly by facial expressions, I could have picked up on his thoughts no problem. \u00a0But given what has happened to my favorite characters in the past, I am grateful that\u00a0these are the only anomalies.<\/p>\n

At the end of the book I was left with two big questions. All throughout the series it has been hinted that John is some sort of reincarnation of Darius, and while there were flashback scenes, that storyline was never resolved. Was there a reason for this? Also, there is a secondary storyline at a bed and breakfast in South Caroline that has nothing, and I mean nothing<\/em>, zip, zero, nothing to do with the rest of the book. Feel free to skip those chapters, you will not miss anything. I believe this is a set up for a future story, but trust me, skip \u2018em.<\/p>\n

Okay BDB fans, who\u2019s next? Blay, Quinn, Payne? Would all three form a m\u00e9nage? (I think that would be an interesting trio) Will Layla finally get her true love?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I actually find myself eagerly looking forward to the next installment.<\/p>\n

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What I’ve read- Lover Mine by JR Ward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-read-novels","tag-romance-novels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39eCR-2Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annaalexander.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}