Heart And Soul Of The Wolf (Guardian Of The Winter Stone #0.5)
by Ariana Jade
My Rating: 2 stars
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: f/f
Blurb:
Mayu is equal parts lucky and unlucky.As one of the few people with a wolf soul, she was chosen to go on a sacred quest to retrieve the Winter Stone. It’s a long dangerous journey but she doesn’t have to undertake it alone. Her best friend since childhood, Konomi, is accompanying her.
As much as Mayu loves having someone by her side, she’s also desperately in love with Konomi and to make matters worse, she’s her sister-in-law.
Will this journey be one of love or heartbreak?
***
Heart And Soul Of The Wolf is a f/f romance with lots of gay panic, a little bit of steam, and no cheating. It serves as a prequel to the Guardian Of The Winter Stone series.
My Review
I received a free copy from the author and voluntarily reviewed it.
I’ve read many books by this author and was curious about this series. Heart and Soul of the Wolf was listed as the prequel and thus I started here. Sadly I struggled with this story, luckily it was short, so I managed to still finish it. And it did make me curious about the rest of the series.
Heart and Soul of the Wolf follows Mayu who is appointed as the Guardian in her village and has to go and retrieve the Winter stone, her brother’s widow Konomi is allowed to accompany her on her quest as she’s family. Mayu is in love with Konomi, but knows she should hide her feelings as Konomi is her brother’s widow. With that set up I had expected there to be a lot of focus on the adventure and finding the winter stone, but instead this is mostly a romance.
I went into this one with wrong expectations, after reading the first chapter I had expected more adventure and this is most certainly mostly a romance. The book starts already while the two characters are on their quest, there’s enough detail about their quest and what’s going on, so I was fine with it and assumed that was because of the short length. Then I kept getting confused as the main plot with the winter stone wasn’t progressing. The character stop at an inn and mostly stay there and work through their romantic feelings eventually. The book ends on a hopeful note, but the quest isn’t resolved. Luckily there was a note form the author explaining that this plot line is important for the main series, so I understand why she ended it there, but it just felt very confusing to me at first especially as I thought the quest was the plot of this story. I kinda wish I had read this one after the main series as I feel it might’ve worked better then for me. I am curious about the main series and definitely want to read book 1 and hopefully enjoy that one more.
The romance in this one is very angsty, which the blurb mentions, but I hadn’t read that before reading the book and wasn’t quite prepared for how much angst there would be as I had expected more quest plot line. Mayu is in love with Konomi, but keeps trying to hide her feelings as Konomi is her brother’s widow and she thinks she shouldn’t feel this way. I liked when they finally talking things through and found out how the other felt. And I liked how close they were, but their romance just didn’t fully work for me. There is enough to give a feel for how close they are and what they like about the other.
There is a lot of world building that’s hinted to, but this book itself was quite limited in terms of world building and I just wanted to know more. There are mentions of the wolf soul, but I am not quite sure what the significance is of this or how many people have one or what it means. Then there is the winter stone and while that one is explained a bit, but I didn’t get why it was missing, I think this is part of the mystery and plot for the main series. And there are plenty of intriguing pieces and interesting setting and world building that I wanted to know more. I hope and think the rest of the series deals more with that.
To summarize: This prequel didn’t quite work for me, but it did make me curious about the rest of the series. I had expected there to be more about the quest plot line of finding the winter stone, but instead this prequel mostly focuses on the romance. The romance gets resolved, but not the quest plot line. The author note at the end explains why, but it still bothered me as the story felt incomplete. The romance is pretty angsty with Mayu being in love with her brother’s widow and feeling like she shouldn’t, so there’s a lot of angst and hiding her feelings. I liked when they finally talked things through. The world building is very interesting, but there was so little of it, it just made me want to know more. I look forward to reading the first book and hopefully enjoy that one more.
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