2 in 1: Shadow Spell and The Collector by Nora Roberts

I recently listened to these two books back to back so I thought I would review them together.

Shadow Spell (Berkely, March 2014)  is the second book in the "Cousins O'Dwyer" series.  I thought this was one slightly better than the first.  I liked that Meara and Conner were friends first, but I still felt like the romance was a little out of nowhere.  I was also still underwhelmed by the big fight in the end.

What I did like was Conner's ability to go between time and meet his ancestor.  That was pretty cool. In fact, it was the only cool part of the book. I often felt like Ms. Roberts was just phoning this one in and it was longer than it really needed to be.  In fact, I'm not sure this really needed to be a trilogy.  I will probably finish out the series as I am interested in seeing what really happened between Branna and Finn.



I have to say that I did really enjoy The Collector (Putnam Adult, April 2014)  While it was a little longer than I thought it needed to be, I found the story sucked me in until the end.  I loved the historical parts about the Faberge eggs. I also found the main characters Lila and Ashton to be very enjoyable.  I liked their romance.

In addition to the great mystery and main romance, we are treated to a secondary romance between two lost loves.  I wish their story was a little bit more in depth because it was so sweet! The villain was truly evil and creepy and I loved the ending scenes,  This is the one out of the two that I recommend reading.  It will be worth it.