This was, unfortunately, yet another cookie-cutter YA story - the special snowflake ingénue who is the great white savior and who, despite being an adult or near adult, acts like a twelve year old child throughout. There's also the love triangle which predictably erupts notwithstanding the appalling mental abuse both of these male figures inflict on the girl.
Oh, there was the occasional amusing oddity (or in this case, odell-ity!) in the text, such as "Warm heat caressed her back" - that would be as opposed to that nasty cold heat that everyone hates so much?! But even unintentional humorous writing gaffs like that couldn't save me from the tedium of seeing the same story being re-told that's been related a gazillion times before, and with the only real change being the character's names. The author has a BSc in film from Full Sail University and I can see how she earned the BS part anyway - for someone who specialized in college in writing, there's no evidence of it in this work.
The story is of Claire, of indeterminate but young age, raised by a single mom who owned a tavern in medieval times, which of course must explain why Claire, raised in a rough-and-ready bar, and doing some waitressing, is utterly lacking in street smarts and any kind of a tough hide. When Claire's village is attacked by vicious centaurs (for reasons I never learned in the 15% I could stand to read of this), her mom runs with her (holding her hand, like she's six) to the forest, but abandons her there, telling her that she'll be safe! This is the forbidden forest where kids are warned not to go. Huh? Mom for some reason has to go back, and so she leaves Claire to her own devices - namely a dagger which is special, but which idiot Claire promptly loses.
Here's where the biggest trend in this dumb story begins: nothing is ever explained! Every single thing is a mystery and not even the smallest crumb of information is ever offered to the reader. I may be wrong, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that Claire is the bastard child of some elf royalty which is why she's so special. She's rescued (repeatedly it turns out) by the elves, who contrary to rumor do not kill her on sight - although they probably would have done had she not been 'marked'. This is the kind of callous little shits that the elves are in this story, yet Claire seems to have no problem with their attitude.
She is, I believe, supposed to be some sort of royalty among the elves, but her mother chose to keep her in utter ignorance of this her entire life. Despite this, the elves treat her like dog-shit from the off, abusing her and imprisoning her, yet dressing her in revealing sexy outfits. Who actually dresses her is unclear because this is always done when she inevitably passes out. Clearly the elves are total perves. The thing is they behave exactly like humans. There is nothing alien or foreign about them at all. They even use American colloquialisms. Who knew? They actually made the centaurs look better - that's how bad they were.
After being kept incarcerated and in ignorance of what was going on, Claire is forced into undertaking a mission, accompanied by two elves, and evidently these elves have no transportation: not horses, not nothin'! The two who accompany her are apparently a prince and the captain of the king's guard. Why the fuck is the captain of the king's guard abandoning his post? Is there not one single soldier in the entire army capable of handling this job? How pathetic must the soldiery be if the captain is the one who has to go? Who knows? Why is an apparent prince going along, and why only these two with no accompanying soldiers or anything? It made zero sense, unless of course you're creating a YA love triangle. It was so transparent and pathetic that I couldn't stand to read another page of this tedious, unoriginal, and unimaginative trash. This novel is cursed all right.
