Black Dawn, by Mallory McCartney | {ARC} Book Review (SPOILERS) #361

Thank you to Clean Reads Publishing, via Netgalley for allowing me to read Black Dawn by Mallory McCartney in exchange for an honest review.

This review contains spoilers. 

Trigger Warning:
Blood, Blood Mention,
War, & Torture

The end of an Empire, The rise of a Queen

Emory Fae enjoys leading a quiet, normal life. That is until two mysterious, and handsome soldiers show up at her apartment, and the life she knew is instantly whisked away. Memphis Carter and Brokk Foster come from the magical and war ridden world of Kiero, and upon Emory’s arrival she will discover she is the long lost heir to the Royal Line and is thrown into the Black Dawn Rebellion with a dynamic role to ignite the rebels and reclaim her throne.

With both men being darkly woven in her past Emory uncovers hidden secrets, a power held long dormant, and will soon realize there are worse things than supernatural humans, love, loss, betrayal, and a Mad King.

Some things are better left in the shadows.

---

Publication Date: February 14, 2017.

The cover is the first thing that drew me into checking out what the book was about. I’m drawn to dark and pretty book covers! I soon found out that Black Dawn was a YA Fantasy and hand to get my hands on a copy. I’m quite happy that I was approved an ARC for Black Dawn, especially so since I believed that Black Dawn is a Fae novel.

I have one thing that I don’t like about this novel: I’m bothered tremendously by all of the different points of view. I thought that there would be only one point of view, and then two other POV’s were introduced. ….And then another two points of view were introduced.

There were many points of view in Black Dawn, and I honestly don’t care for any of the views aside from Emory’s point of view. Something interesting about these characters though is that they’re all around the 21-year-old age. That, and these people all have what they call super-abilities, but not everyone is human, and almost no one is Fae. Everyone is incredibly realistic, the main characters (the ones who have a POV) as well as the characters who don’t have a point of view in Black Dawn.

The Characters:

• Nyx was moody, and she let her jealousy fuel a betrayal that ended up killing many, many people.
• Adair was in no less terms, an asshole. We’re given an inkling as to why Adair is so heartless, which softens the blow to the readers.
• Brokk is the surprising one. I didn’t expect his part of the story to go where it went. I wonder what Brokk will end up doing with what has happened to him, and the knowledge he gained in the meantime.
• Memphis is another character whom I don’t care for at all. Memphis seems like a good guy, but I can’t help but feel like Memphis will do something terrible.
• Emory. Emory was confused for quite a bit of the novel, seeing as how she  got her memories back very abruptly and it takes time for her memories to work themselves out. It was entirely entertaining to see Emory have her powers back. Something that I liked about Emory is her resilience. She’s pushed and pulled in many different directions which is just a small testament to her strength.

The overall feel that I get from Black Dawn is that this book takes place when the overall story is at the thickest point of plot. Which means that there’s quite a bit of action that takes place in this novel.

I had especially high hopes for Black Dawn. The first thing that I like about this novel is that the pace of this book is incredibly fast. I read this book in 3 hours flat, fast. The storyline is what helps the novel move along. One thing that I struggled with in this book were all the different point of views. At times the different POV’s were welcome, at other times they were just bothersome and I wanted to finish their sections as soon as possible.

Black Dawn is a….interesting story, but unfotunately I did not end up liking it as much as I hoped I would.

I give Black Dawn, 2 stars.

Happy Reading!
— Adele