Penny Well Reads's Reviews > Pure Healing

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

I can see the appeal for this story. I can see why so many people loved this book. But I didn't feel it.

This book has many different characters perspectives being told. We have the two main characters from whom we get the romance (Rain and Valerius), we have another main-ish character that seems to be an important one (Sophia), and then we have many others. Sometimes, I can find this technique interesting and productive, like I do with the Black Dagger Brotherhood books. However in this case, I found this way of narrating to be very distracting, and it prevented me from being able to get attached to the story and its characters. I felt some lack of interest towards most of these secondary character, specially due to the fact that I didn't feel connected to them. Maybe these characters weren't powerful enough to keep me intrigued, or maybe their presentation weren't developed enough so it made me see them from a distant; but over all, I wasn't into them, I wasn't connected to them or what was happening to and around them. Another reason might be because with the exception of one character, the rest of their POVs where told in 3rd person omniscient, and I might have felt more involved if their points of view had also been told in first person like Shopia's.
Furthermore, it took me a while to get into the two main characters’ love story. I believe that the main reason was that we start the book with Shopia's 1st person POV to then change to the main characters 3rd person and then to the secondary characters'. Thus, at the beginning I though I was reading Sophia’s story, I was ready to get invested in her to immediately having the story change towards Valerius and Rain, so my main focus of interest had to change, and right when I was getting into this new main characters, we are cut to get other characters POV, and thus my focus got changed again before getting immerse into any of them or their stories.

The world this book revolves in is not really made clear. We get information without really being explained. So we have to form our own ideas of how it relates. I suppose that this world will become more rounded and justified as we keep reading the next installments, but as it is right now, it leaves me with too many questions since I get a little frustrated at not knowing how it all works and I want to make sense of it.


The sex. I read a few reviews from friends and most of them say that the sex scenes are very hot. I get that, I really do. Unfortunately, it is not so for me. I am pretty sure that the reason why it isn't that hot for me is because of my personal preferences and not because any fault of the narration. I like alpha and dominant men, take charge kind of personalities, specially sexually speaking. Valerius, on the other hand, is a sexually submissive kind of guy, basically the opposite of what I find sexy or attractive. Perhaps, here is another reason why this book failed to engage me.

Anyways, to summarize, and as I said before, I found this book distracting.


P.S.: I am interested to know more about Sophia. Maybe it is so because we get her in first person, or maybe because I want to read about a threesome.