Illumination by Jane Arro
Tropes: slowburn, forcedproximity, forbiddenlove
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Illumination by Jane Arro
Tropes: slowburn, forcedproximity, forbiddenlove
Limited-time access — 3 days left to join the ARC team
Login to read this ARC
Sign up to instant downloador
Continue with Google
EPUB format • Read on Kindle, phone, tablet, computer
About This Romance ARC
He was never leaving his mountain. She was never staying.
FBI Special Agent Mason Quade has spent eleven years learning to read the North Carolina high country he calls home. He knows every trail, every hollow, and every quiet person who lives there. He does not know what to do when Washington sends him Dr. Kyla West.
A forensic entomologist with a fortress built out of nine years and one careful rule, Kyla has come to figure out why a hundred thousand synchronous fireflies have vanished from a cove that had been full of them a year before. Neither the case nor the woman is what Mason expects, and neither of them is prepared for what happens when their reserved professionalism gives way, night by night, in a two-cot yurt above a dying cove.
But something darker than a missing insect population is moving in the mountains around them. And when the case turns from ecology to a foreign operation with reach into their own ground, the careful line Mason and Kyla have been holding will not be enough to keep either of them safe.
A literary romantic suspense set in the ancient forests of the southern Appalachians, Illumination is a slow-burn love story about being seen for the first time, and about what a person will risk to keep someone whole.
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ARC Reviews
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ARC REVIEW through Pen Pinery.
The writing is very descriptive (although the ARC is seriously lacking some comma's) and while it's nice in a way, it doesn't make it an easy read. I notice myself having to reread passages a lot because the writing didn't stick. And this might be on me, but I don't really care for / about fireflies so that part of the story is kinda wasted on me.
There is a lot of exposition in this book and too little dialogue to make a real connection with the MC's. Their relation also does not really feel based..? I have too little to go on to feel their connection. The sexual scenes aren't bad, but -again, and I know I'm repeating myself here- are lacking dialogue for me to get immersed. I've truly never read a fictional book with less dialogue.
This book really isn't that long and yet it feels endless. It is marketed as a slow burn but for a slow burn you need (at least in my book) yearning. There is no yearning. And the firefly storyline? It kinda fizzles out halfway through the story and we don't really get answers on who did it, why, how, who kidnapped her and why, and what was all this for?
I gotta be honest, the only reason I finished this book is because it's an ARC, my first one ever, and I want to honour writing a review but this book unfortunately wasn't for me. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not what I like in my books. I therefore give it a 3 star rating because I'm sure it will be up on other people's streets and I want them to find this book.
