(Cover picture courtesy of Authors to Watch.)

An intimate, gripping Fantasy Romance you will want to savor even as you race through the pages to find out what is really going on.

Jo is about to marry James.

He is standing outside, waiting for her to come down for the ceremony to begin. She can see him through the window. Jo’s brother, Spencer, is there too, talking and joking with James to calm his nerves.

Then Jo’s sorceress aunt, Rowellyn, appears and informs Jo she will never marry James. She must go back in time and undo everything that has happened between them.

Whatever Jo does, her life will be unbearable, but if she does exactly as Rowellyn asks, the lives of her friends and family will be spared. If, however, she refuses to go back, or tells anyone what is happening, James will die.

Jo has no choice. She takes one last longing look at James through the window. She will now have to arrange for James to fall in love with someone else – the vengeful Rowellyn demands it.

But, as Jo will soon discover, in the land of illusion, nothing is certain.

If you enjoy ‘Shadows’, you might also enjoy the prequel, ‘Reflections’, the story of how Jo and James fell in love and of Jo’s first encounters with Rowellyn’s dark magic.

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook from J. Dorothy in exchange for an honest review.]

Sorcery?  Time travel?  A realistic romance?  Shadows had pretty much everything going for it in terms of what I like to see in fantasy, but it fell flat in some respects.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it overall.  I loved how even though Jo was broken-hearted at being sent back to the past to break up her relationship with James, the man she was going to marry, she stayed pretty strong.  Jo was a great character in that despite her best efforts, she could not let go of the man she loved.  That’s loyalty right there!  And her desperate attempts to defeat Rowellyn definitely made me cheer for her every single step of the way.  Along with other three dimensional characters like James, Spencer and Beth, Jo really gave it her all and it was such an enjoyable story for that reason alone.

I liked the whole time travel aspect, but I felt it wasn’t adequately explained at all.  How did Rowellyn come by these powers?  What on Earth does the curse do to make someone a sorceress and why does it always isolate the other sister?  What’s the history behind making sorceresses?  Is there some sort of reason the other sister has to suffer as well?  These were all touched on, but definitely were not explained to my satisfaction.  I felt that there was so much more potential for world-building and giving Rowellyn depth here that J. Dorothy missed out on.  At the same time, the things that were explained like sorceress’ time travel powers were fascinating and felt like a glimpse of the potential of the novel.

For the most part, the pacing was awesome.  We still got to see Jo suffer and develop as a character but the plot did move on fairly constantly.  There was enough action to keep me interested, but not so much that the character development suffered.  However, when it came to the climax J. Dorothy seemed to be rushed to finish the book because after the reasonable pace of the rest of the book the frantic pace of the end was a let-down.  Of course the climax should be faster, but I still don’t fully understand the ending.  I would have loved for a little more explanation of well, everything.

Overall, Shadows was good but maybe it would have been a good idea for me to read Reflections (the prequel) first or for J. Dorothy to explain a little more.

I give this book 3/5 stars.

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*Only available as a Kindle ebook