Review: Dead and Beyond by Jayde Scott (Ancient Legends #4)

Title: Dead and Beyond (Ancient Legend #4)

Author: Jayde Scott

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, Mystery, Fantasy

Publisher: Scotland (self-published)

Synopsis/Summary:Amber Reed is a dead girl walking.

Having just been turned by her gorgeous vampire boyfriend, eighteen-year-old Amber Reed is bestowed with the ability to see ghosts. Between trying to figure out how to control her bloodlust and solving the mysterious disappearance of a friend, Amber realizes someone wants to step into her shoes so badly, they’ll do anything to take her place.

When one secret after another pops up, the only person who believes her is her enemy, Devon. Amber can’t figure out if he’s here to help or save his own immortal race from losing the ancient war against the vampires. What she does know, however, is that she can’t resist his good looks just as much as she can’t help becoming someone else…

In a world of dark magic and ancient enemies, three powerful courts fight for supremacy, and Amber might just be the pawn in winning this war forever. But how’s a girl to survive when everyone wants her dead?

Find the book on: Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble

     After my slight break from the series, I am reading on again. The fourth book in the Ancient Legends Series took us back to Amber, where she decided to plunge headfirst into a mystery that might threaten her life...

    I must say I am not very satisfied with the book. It's still interesting, but I felt like everything that just kept happening. There was no twist at all, and basically no climax, there were mysteries but that was about it. However, I did find that the pages seep by without my knowing, and then the book ended. It wasn't a cliffhanger, but I felt the book really lacked climax. There was a big plot there, and would be stretched to the next book, and it was actually interesting. But the problem was that the reveal came too late, most, and when I say most I meant about 90%, of the book was spent spinning the mysteries for this plot, and that was it, no answers, and the book just ended. There was a vague paragraph about our protagonist processing what really happened and connected the dots, but she didn't elaborate and I didn't really want to think about it. Basically that means the book paved way for an interesting and exciting storyline but things stretched on for too long, and the whole book actually just felt like half the book, with all questions and no answers. That said, there were a few elements that I enjoyed in this book.

    First, I liked the love triangle. I know most of you groaned just reading or seeing that word, but the love triangle in this book was actually quite good. I mean, both sides were nice and I couldn't decide which team I'm in, like what happened when I read The Nine Lives of Chloe King Trilogy (review here!). In my opinion, that was a successful love triangle. I mean, what was the point of a love triangle if everyone knew from the start who the protagonist would end up with anyway? But of course, the love triangle in this book wasn't one sided, and I liked it :)

    Second, I love how smooth the plot went. Granted, there was only one POV(Amber) this time around, so there wouldn't be situations where readers confused from the switch of POVs and decided to take a break from the book (I did that!). The plot really kept moving and I just kept reading. But like I said from the beginning, the book lacked tension, drama and climax, even if it was able to lure me in and kept me reading, I wasn't really gushing about it. So actually this part was fifty-fifty. I liked that the plot went on without bumps, but I hated that there were no climax at all.

    It seemed that there were more paranormal creatures getting thrown into the mix this time. We had a werewolf, and a new demigod. These two characters didn't appear very often or hadn't appear until the very end of the book, so I really couldn't judge their powers and whether they made sense or not...

    The story was set back to Scotland in Aidan's mansion again. And the infamous shed made an appearance too. What I didn't understand was where did all the people go. The last time I checked, Henry and the house-keeper (the former one, I can't remember her name) should still be living in the garden shed, working for Aidan and Claire were still living in the house. But this time neither of them showed up which left a really big plot hole here. And I must admit I was upset because I was really looking forward to read about Claire's story, and now she didn't have an appearance at all, just some name-drop and it was like she moved to another planet or something. No one talked about her, which definitely didn't make sense.

    So, like I said, Amber was back for this book, and so was Aidan and some other characters that took a back seat during the whole Cass-losing-her-soul-mate debacle. (They did appear in that 2 book, and played a part too, but not an important one.) There was really no way to talk about the new characters because first of all, their parts were really small in this book, like a random name-drop here and the story just went on and second, there was really no way to introduce them without spoiling. So I will just talk about Devon, the guy that seemed interested in Amber in the first book, and was a recurring character in book 2 and 3.

    Devon was kind of like a two-sided guy. He could be really cold, like, no expression from his face or voice at all, or he could be quite cute, when he was flirting with Amber. I found that I have fallen in love with this character because his conversations with Amber were so funny, I didn't really have a LMHO moment, but it was good humored and I could feel that their flirting came rather natural, which spiked a hope in me despite Aidan being her bonded mate. I wouldn't tell you how that went but I think you will like Devon a lot more after you read this book ;)

    Blogger just started acting wonky when I finished the character part so I will be blunt and end this review. I have no desire to fight with blogger about the htmls in my blog.

    I would give this book 3 stars. It was a pretty good read if you were already a fan of the series and love Amber right from the start, but I am pretty sure just this book along won't be able to attract many readers to keep on reading. Because, let's face it, this book lacked the climax that I so needed in my stories. Since it failed to impress me but still managed to keep me interested throughout the whole book, I would give it an average 3 stars. I would recommend this to readers of light YA paranormal, as in the storyline won't too heavy, good for readers that didn't like reading a book that got all depressed and grim and stuff. Happy reading!

Ratings: 3 stars!

It was quite a light paranormal read I just had there, though it lacked some much needed tension to create a climax. So, tell me, what book you have read that had the most awesome climax? What do you think was needed to create a proper climax? And finally, the question that matters the most, what do you think of the book, or the series in general? Do you agree with me that this one was kind of a downer with the book 2 and 3 being so awesome? (Okay, technically, that was more than one question, but it's always good to have options ;) )

BTW: Anyone who uses blogger suffered the same formatting problem as me? You know, things shifting when you point your wicked little mouse at it? I must say, I am really annoyed. And that problem had been going on for weeks!