Figure Of Speech - Book Review

By Dana Marie Bell

Synopsis

Chloe Williams has waited four long years for her mate to acknowledge her. Time and again he has turned her away for being too young, even when she was hospitalized, recovering from a beating that left lingering aftereffects. Now that he’s been turned into a Wolf, his mating instincts are kicking in big time. Chloe has to decide if it’s worth risking her heart yet again.

Ten years older than Chloe and dealing with issues she knows nothing about, veterinarian James Woods is about ready to howl in frustration. He’s been drawn to Chloe since she was a radiant nineteen-year-old college student, but the age difference held him back from making a move on her. Now his Wolf wants what’s his, and Jim is finally in a place where he can claim her.

Between meddling mothers, Hunter brothers, and a mystery that threatens to end Chloe’s life, they might find an opportunity to tell each other just how they feel. Or find themselves separated by more than just misunderstood words.

Review

I have been waiting for Jim and Chloe’s story for so long, ever since we were introduced to them in ONLY IN MY DREAMS (Halle Pumas # 5). When Chloe first met Jim four years ago, she knew he was her mate. But Jim, not being a shifter or knowing that shifters even existed, didn’t understand his pull to Chloe and kept denying his feelings and denying her by claiming she was too young for him.

On top of that, Chloe has had a very rough year. For currently unknown reasons, she was attacked and left for dead in an alley. Only Julian’s healing powers were able to bring her back from the brink of death. Sadly, he couldn’t heal all her injuries and to this day she still suffers from some physical and mental effects of that attack. After the attack, she had hoped Jim would realise what he almost lost, but he had some serious personal issues to deal with at the time and rejected her…again. But after recently being attacked by a wolf-shifter and turned, he is now desperate to make Chloe his.

Sadly, I was let down by FIGURE OF SPEECH. There was no chemistry between Jim and Chloe. It didn’t keep my attention. The attempts at humour felt forced and overly drawn out. There were no funny comments or sexy scenes that are worth mentioning. And the repetition got old. I got sick of hearing Jim’s explanations of Spencer, the issues regarding his parents, and why he kept rejecting Chloe over the years. Apart from Jim’s issue with their 10 year age gap (which I totally understand considering she was just 19 when they met), the whole saga with Spencer and his parents just didn’t make sense to me. I felt like this was only introduced in order to gain sympathy and a quick forgiveness for Jim for the sake of moving the story along quickly. Especially since he still currently has those issues with Spencer and his parents, only now he’s a wolf and he can’t stand the suffering of the mate dreams. Therefore, he’s now ready to claim Chloe. I get the feeling that if he hadn’t been changed, he would still be rejecting her.

And after four years of suffering the mate dreams herself, Chloe doesn’t seem overly upset about the fact that only now is Jim ready to claim her. She suffered for years. What? She can’t make him suffer for a few more weeks??? She never even ranted or raved at him, or told him how badly his rejection hurt her.

Like I said above, I felt the relationship between Jim and Chloe was rushed in order to make room for the conspiracy, which was the most dominant part of this story. And I am so ready for this conspiracy to be over. I’m worried that Miss Bell is starting to spread things a little too thin and we’ll end up with a lot of loose ends. There’s at least one more book to come in this Halle Shifters series, and given that there is another couple waiting to be mated, I think there’ll be at least one more book after that.

I’ve really enjoyed reading the Halle Pumas, Poconos Pack and Halle Shifters series, so it sucks to give any book in these series a less than 5 Heart review.