Destiny Hawkins

At first, I was honestly pretty meh on the book. Just a typical shifter romance with cookie cutter protagonists, yeah? But then, I did a quick search and realized Krystal Blue by Destiny Hawkins wasn’t such a typical shifter romance. Featuring a WLW romance, I immediately knew I needed to read this.

We open up to a pretty jarring set of scenes. Protagonist and story namesake Krystal is forced to run away from her foster home while love interest Alveya is being punished. This was a very weird set-up for me. It starts with alternating point of views but then completely drops it. I had imagined we would swap between both yet we stay with Krystal for the majority of the novel, only breaking away back to Alveya once more. The initial scene with Alveya doesn’t do anything spectacular to set up the story. What we learn as we go along is exactly what we learn from that opening scene. If it had been cut, the expectations would have made for a smoother ride.

Apart from the WLW romance, the story itself was fairly cookie cutter and unoriginal, though still enjoyable! Character doesn’t know her heritage. Is confused by things getting weird. Becomes new girl at school. Wow who are all these hot people??? Oh nooo, I’m a monster! Resolution. It was enjoyable, like I said, but were it not for the WLW angle, I doubt I would have given Krystal Blue much thought. Side characters were interesting and the hint of a deeper backstory gives just enough intrigue to make me want to pick up the follow-up in the series.

For anyone that is really looking for WLW paranormal YA stories that feel familiar, pick up Krystal Blue by Destiny Hawkins. For anyone in search of something new and refreshing, you might want to steer clear.

A complimentary copy of this book was voluntarily reviewed originally on The Book Rookery… (mehr)