Lover Unveiled Review

Lover Unveiled is the 19th (!!!) instalment in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J. R. Ward, following an elite class of vampire warriors, protecting their race from old and new enemies. In this book, we follow Sahvage that after centuries of living under the radar with a terrible secret, meets Mae who is set in a collision curse with the species new enemy.

General impressions

This book...how to describe it? Reading Lover Unveiled was like going on a roller coaster that has seen better days but that you keep going on every year because it was great when you were younger and at this point is a beloved tradition. So you lower expectations a bit more every year and hope for the best.

After being mildly and then more and more disappointed by the last few books, I went into Lover Unveiled not expecting much only to be hit with a dozen chapters so thrilling that I immediately forgot all my hangups with this series. For a blessed few chapters all that crossed my mind was "omg","this is awesome" and "the Warden is back, baby!". I was being introduced to characters I knew would be dead in twenty pages time and I was still caring for their every thought, curious about the new enemy and introduction to more of the species legends and lore and loving how characters we hadn't seen in several books were making an appearance and being awesome.

And then all those amazing ideas came to nothing as the plot kept going in circles and all that made the main characters interesting was snuffed out with insta-love and lack of communication or even chemistry or respect. Suddenly I was thrown off the ride and fell headfirst into the concrete floor with a very bloody "splat" and was forced to lie there in agony until the end of the book. The bar was low and this book was still not even close to meeting it.

Characters

This book has two completely new main characters: Sahvage a vampire hiding in the human world and gaining a living in underground fights and Mae, a vampire commoner from humble beginnings, desperately looking for a magical item that can save her brother.

I started this book mildly curious about Sahvage. As someone that read all the books in this series (including guides, spinoffs and short stories), I had a suspicion about how he might fit into the universe but I was happy being led down whatever path the author seemed fit as I wasn't invested in him from previous books. I was much more interested in seeing how certain plotlines and mysteries that had been at the forefront of every fan's mind were going to finally be made central and explained.

Sahvage did initially end up being all I wanted and more in the way his past and present embroiled themselves with our fave characters in the Brotherhood but the way the plot (or whatever poor excuse for it this was) had these other characters reacting to him was ridiculous. It was like if the entire Brotherhood were sharing one brain cell and whoever it was the day to use it, had the day off.

The greatest sin for me though was the way the female characters were written.

We have one stupid b***h who causes all kinds of pain but she is "magical" and in a f***ing insulting virginal pedestal (Jesus, aren't we over this kind of female character?) so there are no consequences for her. Or personality. Or any interest in seeing her getting any kind of happy ending in that stupid setting for a love triangle where there is absolutely zero chemistry.

Oh, and as for the heroine? She spends the entire book dealing with magic that she does not understand and is never properly explained, puts everyone in danger with her blindness and guilt and then simply forgets all her motivations at the end, in order to embark on a stupid little romance with the hero. The author's inner misogyny usually shows itself in the way she writes her secondary female characters but in this book, she wasn't even able to save the heroine. The only interesting thing about Mae was that her upbringing offered some representation of how it felt to be raised in a very traditional setting, particularly when you are a woman and are told that you cannot/ should not do all kinds of things and instead of rage, the heroine slowly unpicks all those rules and decides which one's fit her and which ones she can do without.

Conclusions

My favourite parts in this book were definitely seeing characters from the previous ones again: Rehvenge was cool, Wrath, the Blind King was less of an asshole than usual so that's something for him and seeing a bit of Murhder's family life, after being disappointed by his book as well was really sweet. The villain was mediocre, but in a book this bad, her chapters were almost a relief. I am interested though in seeing more of a certain middle-aged female detective (because women don't simply stop being desirable and worthy of anything past age thirty, but seeing a woman past forty in any kind of romance is still rare) as she was hinted to be the love interest of another central character, but at this point, there is still no news about who will the next book be about. Will, I read it though? Definitely.

Rating: 2.5/5