The Witch Collector

I couldn’t put this book down. Other than difficult to pronounce words, (what fantasy book doesn’t though, right?) it’s an easy to follow storyline. Full of adventure, magic, love, and mystery. Already moving onto the next book in the series.

Surprisingly good!

I was hooked from the beginning! I love the characters; the way the author builds their personalities. The twist and turns the story truly takes you on an adventure. I must read City of Ruin ❤️

Wow! A fascinating , unique world filled with magic, rich characters, an engaging love story, a nuanced plot, believable emotions and decisions. And the writing/editing is fabulous. The first one was free, but I'll definitely be buying more - I'm hooked!

I never not finish a book. I just was not impressed and felt the writing was subpar.

3.5 stars. This book is a bit slow. Most romantasy MMC are walking red flags and I appreciate that Alexus at least somewhat breaks that mold. Couldn't give 4 stars as the plot is a little slow. I did really enjoy that Raina is mute and has to sign; it's different and comes with its own challenges that this book kinda explores. That being said, the MMC’s side of the relationship felt insta-love to me and there was a lot of opportunities for interesting character dynamics with Raina given her sign language but were glossed over.

I left this review on Amazon as well but wanted to include it here. I don’t always mind tropes— they’re usually popular for a reason. *spoilers* This one is the well-used: Naive girl with fiery attitude in village wants more out of life, and some adventure. Tall dark and handsome guy who is supposed to be bad comes and whisks her away, and turns out he’s not bad, just misunderstood with sad backstory. They travel and both fall for each other along the way while they try and not die in the woods. All the while there is a plot going on that the main villain is planning evil things in the background. I also don’t like in books where the main heroines get to say and do mean things to other characters but it gets looked over because that’s “just her personality” or just because she is the main character or a woman. She treated the male lead pretty badly a couple times after he opened up about some of his struggles and backstory that she never apologized for and that he never reacted to. I like flawed characters but I wish they would have acknowledged that she was not nice to him when he tried to open up. (He warns her multiple times he has some dark ish in him and she says he doesn’t care. When he forces her to listen before they hook up she calls him a freak of nature, accuses him of not telling her sooner, and runs away. Even though he tried to tell her multiple times.) She also bests trained experienced warriors in combat twice her size multiple times, which I found unrealistic. Her training and experience is she sometimes trains with another village girl who is a bit younger than her in their spare time. The other girl is supposedly talented, but she also has no experience or true soldier training, so idk how that would be enough to take on war-hardened soldiers. Otherwise it was written well. The descriptions were pretty, and the vibe was very much wintry. The mc was interesting. She doesn’t speak and uses sign language. But to me the plot was slow— too slow for such a common trope. They were mostly just in the woods the whole time. No witty banter, no real enemies to lovers, no teasing. Mostly just insta-lust due to close proximity. It was well written but just okay to me. Nothing special or different.

It’s a good read. This book was recommended to me as a slow burn enemies to lovers and it delivered. However, I think it could’ve been better. I skipped a few pages just to jump to the steam because so much happens right before the two characters FINALLY get together. At one point I gave up and came to the conclusion I would have to read book two for that but the author delivered towards the very end of the book. I almost gave it a 4 star but I’ve read so many other books and I think I would’ve wanted more suspense in the beginning to draw me in. It took me almost 2 weeks to finally decide to give this book a chance simply because it wasn’t enough to hook me from the beginning.

I liked this book, it was fast paced and interesting. I enjoyed the characters.

I really enjoyed this book but it took a bit for me to get into. I found myself getting distracted easily the first couple hundred pages. I think there could have been a bit more personality to the characters especially considering there were multiple POVs all in first person. I will say though by the time I was about 60% of the way through the book I knew I would want to read the second and I was invested 100%. This came once I got some proper back story which is what really helps me personally (detailed world building/decent back story - the second of which doesn’t really happen until later in the book and felt very info dump). Overall I think it’s a great travel/dark enemy to lovers romance and really makes me excited for the other books in this series.