Third Shift, Book #2
Review of Third Shift, Book #1
Heat Factor: Blow job in a closet the first time they meet, but we don’t get a lot of explicit details.
Character Chemistry: Sexual attraction + some ineffable thing that’s breaking down the walls they’ve erected.
Plot: Elijah is trying to get information on an arms dealer, so he honeypots the guy’s girlfriend. Too bad Meghna is also an agent with her own agenda. And then Elijah kills someone he shouldn’t and shit hits the fan.
Overall: I got bored and gave up after reading the first third.
I read the first book in this series—Big Bad Wolf—over the summer, and liked it well enough to try out the sequel. Unfortunately, the problems I had with BBW were exacerbated here, and the sexual tension was way less palpable. I just couldn’t get into it.
The set-up and the worldbuilding are great. We’re in a dystopian version of the present, with fascism on the rise the world over, except there are shifters. Elijah runs a black box company that is, I dunno, fighting fascism? Hard to tell exactly what they do. Anyways, it’s a bunch of ex-military supernatural beings, and they’re trying to get info on an upcoming arms sale. For some reason, they decide that the best way to get close to this arms dealer is through his socialite girlfriend, EVEN THOUGH there’s a vampire on the Third Shift team who ALREADY has a relationship with a vampire in the arms dealer’s inner circle.
Enter Meghna. Meghna is an apsara, which is kind of like a South Asian muse. Her powers were not entirely clear by the time I gave up, but it seems like she has influence powers. Plus she’s trained as an assassin, because the apsara have banded together with other Asian supernatural beings in a secret society to fight for good. Basically, Meghna is a bad-ass who hides in plain sight.
So why am I bored? Well.
- Instead of focusing on Meghna’s badassery, we’re talking a lot about how Elijah got through her defenses just by sexing her.
- Secondary POV characters. I still don’t care about the adventures of Fin the Pansexual Vampire.
- I am sympathetic to the politics of this book, but I really don’t need to hear about the cis-het white male privilege of the co-founder of Third Shift (Elijah’s business partner) multiple times.
- Repetition. I think this is what it actually comes down to. It just felt very repetitive, and the actual backstory on Meghna (and I guess Elijah, too, but I was less interested in him) was being doled out too slowly, and there wasn’t enough action to keep the plot moving forward.
I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.
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