TW// murder (including of children, husbands, fathers, mothers), intentional drug overdose, heroin use, gun violence, drugging, brief mentions of child abuse, brief mention of war, brief sexism

This is the worst book I’ve read so far this year and I’m honestly really disappointed. I heard “sapphic witch x vampire romance” and I got my hopes high, but Unbound has so many problems. The characters in this book are bland and the plot is all over the place, but my biggest issues with this book are the inconsistencies and the spicy scenes.

The inconsistency problem starts really early on in the book. Faye breaks a leg, but being a vampire, it doesn’t stay broken. In some scenes she pretends that she has a broken leg to convince people she’s not a vampire while in other scenes, the story fully forgets she is pretending to have a broken leg so she’ll go sprinting around as if everyone knows she can heal herself. It’s like she only had to fake having a broken leg when it was convenient for the story, but in reality she would’ve had to pretend that she had a broken leg any time she was near someone. It’s bizarre, too, that none of the characters connected the dots that she was supernatural for such a long time despite her running around with a fully healed leg only days after she broke her leg. Then there’s the pneumonia issue. After she breaks her leg “cliff diving” (she jumped off a building so “building diving?”), the doctor runs some tests and finds out she has pneumonia. However, after the story casually mentions she has pneumonia, it doesn’t bring up the pneumonia again until the end of the book. It’s like the story forgets she has pneumonia for 85% of the book. It’s not consistent with her health conditions at all. Then there’s the issue of one of the boys who Faye is trying to find as part of a child protective services case. He’s important for the first half of the book but he randomly disappears somewhere in the middle of the book. He’s only brought up again at the very end of the story, but since he was a huge pawn in the main conflict of the story, that large section where he’s not mentioned at all felt very inconsistent and weird. There’s some other inconsistencies throughout the book but these were the biggest ones that irked me the most.

Before I address the spicy scenes (since not everyone feels comfortable reading about those), I’ve gotta address a few other things.

I didn’t like the vampire part of this story at all. I’m normally a huge fan of anything vampire, but Faye is only really a vampire when it’s important for the story. The rest of the time she’s a normal human. Her vampiric features aren’t what I typically associate with vampires either besides the very rare occasion when she needs to drink blood. While you could say it’s a unique take on vampires, it really didn’t work for me and I would’ve preferred a more traditional vampire depiction even if it was very stereotypical.

There’s a very graphic section where a character dissects (and kills) a mythological creature. I’m not sure why the author included this section in the book as it felt very disjointed and will make many people like myself feel extremely queasy. It didn’t flow with the rest of the story at all.

I also feel like this book had the potential to explore the fantasy world a lot more than it did. There’s trolls, giants, and mythological creatures that are dumped into this story without being explored much. It felt really disappointing whenever a new creature was added but never explored in any depth.

I noticed that this book briefly tried to say that Hitler targeted supernatural people first before he targeted Jewish people. It’s not explicitly antisemitic, but it feels really insensitive to include that as part of the worldbuilding in the book.

Now onto the spicy scenes since there’s no avoiding this topic when it comes to Unbound. Only read the rest of my review if you’re okay reading discussions of adult content and if you’re okay with seeing brief spoilers.




The book starts to get steamy really quickly with Molly getting feely with a complete stranger who has a broken leg and is laying in a hospital bed. Even though Molly isn’t the main doctor in the story, it still starts off seeming like Molly is being inapropriate to a patient. It feels wrong, so I knew that the spice in this book would be bad from the hospital bed scenes alone.

Then it’s revealed that Molly is having threesomes with two men. That’s fine. We love a good threesome, but wait… one of the men is a boy who Molly has raised since he was a teenager. That’s wrong on so many levels.

A masturbation scene is next, but what is Molly masturbating to? She’s masturbating to a call where Faye tells her about the current child protective services case she’s working on, and yes, Molly finishes it to completion. It’s giving inapropriate and potentially a predator.

Then there’s a scene where Faye masturbates in front of a stone troll as a form of payment. I’m too uncomfortable to even describe the troll scene further, but it's a lot worse than I'm describing.

Back to the issue of Molly having intercourse with a man she’s raised since a teen. Molly says that she should’ve taken Faye in when she was a kid to raise her and that even if she did that, they still would’ve ended up making love nonstop. It’s giving grooming and pedophilia.

There’s also the whole plot twist of discovering that Molly has been intimate with two people who are very closely related. Again I’m so uncomfortable that I can’t even comment on this more, but I'm being vague to hide what the exact plot twist is.

I can’t with this book. I don’t know how Unbound fumbled such a promising story idea, but it just did not work at all and I probably won’t be reading from this author again.

<i> I received a free eArc of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher/author for providing me with an ALC in exchange for my honest review.

OMG!!! This book was exactly what I wanted it to be! I loved it. I will make sure to check out other books by this author. When I requested this I was just intrigued by the concept of it and I loved how it turned out. This story had a great plot and if you have read this and enjoyed it, This was so much. It was such a great story. I would say give this one a try. I will continue to follow this author. Way to go to this author for not letting me down.

I highly enjoyed the narrator of the audiobook. Kept me listening.

I really struggled with reading this book. The writing is honestly so poor that it was impossible to get into the story. The pacing was also fairly off. I genuinely did not enjoy this book.

Unbound was surprisingly hot. Yeah, I know I am starting the review about the sex (chuckle). Yet that stood out for me. Adrian J. Smith brought the heat. Smith created two, well kind of three, different scenarios and all of them worked for me. I loved the idea of a menage between Joel, Ben, and Molly (spoiler alert). This is not on the page, but their kisses are and they are just as steamy as Molly’s with Faye. I wish Smith had written scenes between Joel and Ben, but maybe there is an issue with Ben that he can’t be with Joel unless Molly is with them. (Things that make you go “hmmmm”.)

Then there is the necessity of Faye needing to feed from others and what she does to feed and get information. It was all erotic. I kind of thought with one partner that there was going to be some after-effects, but alas there was not. Still, I am a voyeur so I totally got into this scene. Now we get to Molly and Faye and Smith gets explicit - in a really good way. Bookmark!

Now you are wondering with all of this sex was there a storyline? (chuckle) Yes, there is and the premise is good. There is a bad guy, though Smith does have me wondering if some people come across as good when they might be bad. This might still be too early to tell as Unbound is only book one in the “Quarter Life” series.

The action is good. The secondary cast is okay. The interactions with them are superficial so I can’t tell yet if they are worth knowing more about. I did think someone was a bad guy, but they died before I found out (chuckle). Yes, there is death in this story.

Overall, I liked the story. I was surprised that there were spelling and grammatical issues as this book was published in 2015 and I got it on NetGalley five years after it was published. It was more annoying than anything.

Unbound is a complete story with no cliffhanger. It is a happily-for-right-now ending which works for the characters involved. I liked it.

I really hate admitting this but I was really disappointed with this book. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I went into it wanting it to be awesome. What I did like was the author's way of scene setting, but the story didn't flow very well.

I really hate admitting this but I was really disappointed with this book. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I went into it wanting it to be awesome.

What I did like was the authors descriptions. They planted a good image in my head.
But the story didn't flow very well.
As for the sex scenes they kind of popped up at the most unsuspecting moments. It was weird.

For me the book didn't flow. The writing was a little confusing at times. But if you like supernatural books you should give this a go. You may love it. For me it was just ok.

I was given a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Content Warning:
Drug Addiction, Drug Dealing, Murder, Torture, Car Crashs, Death, Attempted Murder, Unsafe Sex

2.5/5 Stars

I picked this up, because it had two things I like: WlW and vampires. I got both and yet I can't help but feel split about this book.

One thing that bothered me is the fact that, this book was dealing with a lot of heavy stuff, but couldn't bother to include a Trigger/Content Warning list. Especially since - and I'll talk about this in a second - some of the stuff it tackeld was done really poorly. And I'm not talking about the sex scenes - even though one of them was ... something else. I'm talking about the whole drug part of the book. Taking drugs was completly romanticized!! Faye claims she isn't an addict, but honey, that's not how this works. It's implied that she's been taking Heroin for years. You can't just stop and go cold turkey and walk something like that off. Addiction is a mental thing as much as it is a physical one. But not once do we see her face the aftermath. She has not a single withdrawal symptom. At least none that are directly implied to have a connection with/to her addiction. What this shows and implies is, that it's just this 'feel good' thing, just this 'making it easier' thing.
It's completly ignoring all the damage drugs inflicts on those that fall victim to it. And I hated that. A lot.

I heard that there would be a lot of sex scenes and yeah, but also no. They weren't as bad as I feared them to be. The placement of the masturbation scene was kinda questionable though. And the sex scene with the org under the bride was ... something else. I was warned about it beforhand - which I'm thankfull for - but it was still making me uncomfortable. Especially since there was no real reason for the scene to be in there. Hell, a lot of the sex Faye has doesn't need to be there. But I guess my asexual ass just couldn't understand the importance of random smut. But eyyy, you know, maybe people actually want to read plot-irrelevant sex scenes nowadays?

I did like the worldbuilding in general, but I still felt like we could have learned more about it. I understand that Faye doesn't really care and that the other characters don't need to be told those things, since they already know about them, but some more information about what Molly was actually doing and what "Tainted" people were and where they came from (and how they are tied into the human world) would have been cool.
On a side note, as a croatian speaking person, I had to smile the second the Sismis appeared on page, because ... hihi :D. They are a made up species and are apparently related to vampires and boy oh boy do I wonder what the croatian word for 'bat' is. xD (Spoiler, it's šišmiš) This isn't a critic, I just wanted to let you know, because I couldn't stop smiling everytime they talked about them.

For all the stuff that I didn't like, I have to say that the story still kept me hooked. It was weirdly exciting and hypnotic. Probably because of the characters. They were all unique and interesting and you just wanted to read more about them. Not only because of the romance, but because they just felt so human. And that, although not a single one of them is.
The (sassy) conversations were really nice to read and their relationships felt genuine. Funny thing is, I even felt like they started to give me some 'found-family' trope vibes.

The plot in itself was good. Faye's motive was pretty simpel and although I felt like some steps she took to get to the end weren't needed, I still enjoyed reading about her. She's absolutly flawed and yet - in her own way - an interesting and good character.

I had feared, that her relationship with Molly would be hella toxic, but it wasn't even that bad. They have both a lot of issues that they need to deal with and a lot of baggage that needs to be unpacked, but their base dyniamic and relationship was fine. I'm not denying the manipulation that took place. But to pretend that they weren't both trying to out-manipulate the other would be taking away a lot of the books appeal.
Look, I'm not saying that they are the most healthy couple out there, but I also think that they could totally make it work. Don't expect sunshine and rainbows. This book is heavy and the characters are too.

Just a few words towards the rep. We have - from my understanding - 4 bisexuals. Who end up in one sapphic and one achillean relationship. The achillean one was really cute by the way. I wish we would have gotten more from them. I also liked the accepting and LGBT friendly handling of the rep. Yes, character A didn't like and trust our MC, but not because she's bi. But rather, because she's a manipulative liar. There's a difference. :P

This book was ... an interesting read. Not what I usually tend to consume, but in it's basis an ok book. Had it not mistreated the drug part, I could have maybe even seen myself giving this 4 stars.

I don't really know what to say about this book... I have such a duality about it, it left me kind of doubting that I'll give a fair review and grade.
I really liked the plot of it, the idea was great, and I'm a big fan of supernatural novels. However, I found myself wanting to skip pages because the book was dragging along and, in my opinion, was poorly edited. Also, many things in it weren't really believable (like Faye hiding who she was while being with an empath and a witch all the time)...
At the end, from initial giddiness, it sort of left me feeling "meh, I might even stop reading it", because I didn't really care what will happen until the end.

I was given a kindle copy of this book via Netgalley.

"Unbound" is a run-of-the-mill urban fantasy novel that includes supernatural and super powered elements. I know that sounds like a rough assessment, but bear with me. This novel fits squarely in one of my favorite categories: Readable TV.

The author's gratuitous descriptions of the people and locations in "Unbound" only lend to creating a clear picture in your mind and make up for the somewhat disrupted flow in some spots. Where this book loses me however is just how over the top the sexual scenes are. They spring up at odd and unsuspecting moments, including during a mundane phone conversation about work. Overall the chemistry between Molly and Faye is like moths to a flame, as is Molly's chemistry with most of her team.

This book is a stand-out beach read, but overall a weak introduction to a series.