Review: Silver

SILVER (Bandia #1)
Talia Vance
Paranormal Young Adult
374 pages
Flux
Available September 8th
Received from publisher via NetGalley for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Brianna has always felt invisible. People stare right past her, including the one boy she can't resist, Blake Williams. But everything changes at a house party where Brianna's charm bracelet slips off and time stands still. In that one frozen, silver moment, Blake not only sees her, he recognizes something deep inside her she's been hiding even from herself.

Discovering she is descended from Danu, the legendary Bandia of Celtic myth, Brianna finds herself questioning the truth of who she is. And when she accidentally binds her soul to Blake, their mutual attraction becomes undeniable.

But Blake has his own secret, one that could prove deadly for them both.

Bound together by forbidden magic, Brianna and Blake find themselves at the heart of an ancient feud that threatens to destroy their lives and their love.

MY THOUGHTS
Silver is an intriguing first installment, delighting us with a touch of Celtic mythology as well as a deeply forbidden romance, and keeping us on the edge of our seats as life for young Brianna gets more complex by the page. Tensions run extraordinarily high the more we learn of Brianna’s lineage and the cycle of violence that plagues those like her, defeat settling on our shoulders with a tangible weight as the fate of all the young women before her becomes brutally clear. While the mythology and the starcrossed nature of the romance is endlessly fascinating and painfully heart-wrenching, the actual romance itself leaves us slightly lukewarm – missing the flush to our cheeks and the rapid thumping of our hearts every time Brianna and Blake appear on the same page, but the potential for combustion is there and we can’t help but hope we feel that fire in the next book.

Brianna is an enjoyable heroine, a self-deprecating young woman who is constantly able to poke fun at her social ineptitude when she goes from being completely unnoticed to being the sole focus of Blake’s intimidating attention. She’s used to walking by members of the opposite sex without so much as a nod of acknowledgement, and while she at some point may have wallowed in a deep hole filled with self-pity, she’s long past it when we meet her, accepting her virtual invisibility with humorous resignation. Her relationship with Blake once it starts does feel very one-sided however – her feelings for him seeming the stronger of the two – but thankfully she’s not oblivious to the imbalance, instead proceeding to ask questions of Blake we as readers want asked as she tries her best to see past the bond they share and discern his true feelings.

Where the romance seems to fizzle slightly is with hero Blake, a young man with a conflicting destiny to Brianna’s own who practically dares us to try and get a read on him as things progress, and in doing so ultimately succeeds in keeping us at bay. Quickly after their meeting the two of them find themselves soul-bound to one another, creating a physical ache when they’re apart and a burning attraction when they’re near. We know so little of Blake prior to their bond, and once they’re joined he spends majority of his time alternating between fighting against the attraction and succumbing to it, leaving Brianna and us thoroughly confused as to where the truth of his feelings lies on the emotional spectrum. Just as Brianna’s gone years without anyone around her really seeing her, Blake is much the same for us as readers, our eyes searching him out but ultimately glancing off him as he remains an indistinct form in this tale; a nebulous mix of traits we can never quite fully force our minds and hearts to focus on.

For a story predominantly relationship focused, Silver doesn’t quite captivate us with the romance, things between Brianna and Blake often very sexy and very physical, but the intimacy we wish would accompany that physical draw is sadly missing a bit in this first installment. There are declarations of love, but they feel hollow, the words rattling around in a cavernous space we’d hoped would be filled with complementary feelings of respect and friendship, yet instead we’re left with more of a begrudging attraction on Blake’s part. The story is definitely more than interesting enough to continue on with the series however, and there’s so much room for growth in the relationship that we can’t help but want to see if both Blake and Brianna will work harder in the next book to convince us what they have is real.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Silver

SILVER

Rhiannon Held
Adult Urban Fantasy
320 pages
Tor
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

Andrew Dare is a werewolf. He’s the enforcer for the Roanoke pack, and responsible for capturing or killing any Were intruders in Roanoke’s territory. But the lone Were he’s tracking doesn’t smell or act like anyone he’s ever encountered. And when he catches her, it doesn’t get any better. She’s beautiful, she’s crazy, and someone has tortured her by injecting silver into her veins. She says her name is Silver, and that she’s lost her wild self and can’t shift any more.

The packs in North America have a live-and-let-live attitude, and try not to overlap with each other. But Silver represents a terrible threat to every Were on the continent.

Andrew and Silver will join forces to track down this menace while discovering their own power and their passion for each other.

MY THOUGHTS 

Silver is a quiet story for an urban fantasy featuring Weres; the intensity of descriptively violent battles and dominance power plays are notably absent, and in their place is a remarkable young woman who holds our attention as surely as any action sequence ever could. This is not a story that progresses at a frenetic pace, the pages flying by with such speed that our fingers cramp by the time we reach the end, instead we read with a sort of awed reverence for Silver and the trauma she’s so clearly sustained, reading slowly and carefully so as to not miss any clues that will help us figure out exactly what happened to her and how she can regain what she’s so tragically lost.

Silver is an extraordinary young woman, a jittery ball of confusion, madness, and fear when Andrew tracks her down in the very beginning, and while her seemingly incoherent ramblings of Death, the Lady, and snakes have us wanting to keep our distance a bit initially, we quickly come to understand the language of her madness and the intelligence behind each and every word she utters. She’s a victim of appalling cruelty, but as she demonstrates for Andrew again and again, her status as such does not make her weak, nor do the things she sees make her crazy. She simply sees a world that others aren’t privy to, and while many see that as a defect—something to be pitied–both we as readers and Andrew come to see just how strong it makes her, often surprised by the sharp wit that accompanies her discussions with an invisible companion she calls Death.

While there is a subtle thread of romance between Silver and Andrew woven throughout, it possesses the same quiet quality as both Silver and the story itself—no sparks or overwhelming lust, just a beautiful attraction between two people who have walked hand in hand with death, one as a witness to it and one as the hand who dispenses it. Andrew is as interesting a character as Silver, a very strong Were with the dominance to be an alpha should he choose it, but he’s also exceedingly different from a typical shifter alpha male. He doesn’t come across as invincible–able to tear down any opponent who threatens him or Silver–instead he can be physically overpowered at times, showing a vulnerability that seems to make him fit with Silver all the more perfectly, not too alpha as to deny her offer of strength when he needs it, nor too weak to protect her when her own strength fails.

Overall, Silver is a strong debut from Ms. Held, one that has us rooting for our main couple with every fiber of our being and reveling in the emotional complexity they each demonstrate chapter to chapter. This first installment wraps up nicely, leaving room for more without abandoning us to a long list of unanswered questions, and the second book will be immediately added to my list of must-reads as soon as a release date is announced.

Rating: 4/5