Book 70, 2023

[chez_jae]

Shifting Fates by Meredith Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I finished an ebook last night: Shifting Fates by Meredith Clarke. It's the first in the author's "Crescent City Witch" urban fantasy series. The main character is orphaned Rosalie who has just learned she may be the subject of a prophecy.

Rosalie makes do in New Orleans by giving ghost tours. When she feels a connection to a handsome stranger on one of her tours and he later saves her from an attacker that he claims is a vampire, Rosalie learns that there really are things that go bump in the night. In an effort to keep Rosalie safe, Spencer takes her to the cabin he shares with his three friends--all of them wolf shifters. They are convinced that Rosalie is the powerful witch who's been prophesied to bring together the supernatural elements. She doesn't want to believe it, but as her powers manifest and the leader of the vampires targets her, Rosalie is forced to accept that her life is about to change in a very big way.

I found the beginning of the book more interesting than the latter part. I didn't really care for how Rosalie went from being mundane to wielding ALL THE POWER. This is billed as a reverse harem. Not exactly my cup of tea, but when it's done right it works. With this first book, we don't really delve into that aspect except that Rosalie is inexplicably drawn to all four of the new men in her life. There's lots of nuzzling and touching and hugging, and she does get down and dirty (literally!) with one of them. I didn't understand how the vampires were able to attack in broad daylight. The author glossed it over as they were 'dream walking' (meaning they weren't physically there), but if Rosalie was warned that someone could harm her physical body by harming her astral body while dream walking, wouldn't the sun have done in the astral vampires? I also felt there wasn't a lot of resolution at the end.

Favorite lines:
♦ "Did I fight Zeus in my sleep or something?"
♦ I could've balanced my entire checkbook on the globes of his ass."

Started out great, fizzled out by the end. Average score.