Royals (Shifter Trilogy #1) by S. Dalambakis
Published: January 15th 2018
Review:
Royals is the story of Callyn Silvers, a quiet unassuming girl with an abusive home life, and how her world is changed when she unknowingly becomes the mate of four different shifters.
I picked this book up for the beautiful cover, the intriguing plot line and just plain curiosity. It’s marketed as a reverse harem book (which is new to me) with high schoolers (which just plain confused me). The plot seemed like it had potential, but unfortunately I found myself quickly skimming most of the book just waiting to see if characters would develop in interesting ways. Here we go.
Myth 2/5
This book left a lot to be desired. It mostly read like a rough first draft. I could see the potential, but it was covered with bad dialogue and long chunks of repetitive description. Much of the descriptive language could have been cut and the dialogue could have been played up to make a much better, more enthralling story. As it’s written, the plot plays out exactly how you would expect. There’s almost no tension between the main characters, and Callyn has no agency until the very end of the story. The boys don’t show any agency at all – despite knowing about Callyn’s rough home life and their ability to literally shift into ferocious, protective animals, they do nothing to save or protect her because they are told not to.
Part of that telling comes in the form of prescriptive, bland language between teenage boys and their parents. Plus, everyone’s parents are hunky-dory with a group of 17 year olds being mated to one female. It seems like an obvious place to add some tension to the story.
I kept reading because I really hoped there would be some twists and turns, but I was disappointed in the writing and the outplay. The story ended too soon after the final revelation, and nothing really happened the first half of the book.
Magic 2/5
This book was a fun concept. I have not read a reverse harem book before, and especially since this one is set in senior year of high school, it seemed very PG to me. Like, verrrry PG. Most high school level books I’ve read do a little more than just hand-holding. I also liked the magic that powers the shifter world, how it’s been dying for the past 200 years and how each of the boys shifts into a different animal – I’d like to know more about how that works, what animal you will shift into – and then actually see it. It’s such a huge premise of the book and yet we don’t see anyone shift until the very end. I kept expecting them to take turns shifting and patrolling Callyn’s yard since they know her father is abusing her, but even that didn’t happen. There were a lot of opportunities for stronger world building and to use magic to move the plot forward that I would have liked to see.
Overall 2/5
Besides grammar errors, the writing was repetitive and hard to follow. And even though the book reads like a rough first draft, I still think there’s potential. Thankfully, the author has put out that she’ll be getting it professionally edited.
(There is also a preview to book 2 at the end (obviously), and the writing in the final chapter and preview was already better than what I read through the whole first book.)
I would skip this book for now, but consider reading a second, heavily edited version.
