Book Review - Damaged by Becca Vincenza

 

Title: Damaged (Rebirth Series, #1)
Author: Becca Vincenza

Genre: New Adult, Paranormal romance
(some mature situations)

Today I get to review the book, DAMAGED by Becca Vincenza. This book is book one of a series and it’s the first introduction into the author’s paranormal world.

Damaged is an interesting story about a paranormal girl, Audrey, who has secrets locked away inside of her and has blocked them from her memory. Other people want these secrets and we find out that Audrey has been tortured and locked away in a prison cell for five years.

She gets rescued from this prison but she lives in constant fear that these new people are going to punish her, torment her, and torture her like her previous captives. She is scared of having common things like a soft bed, blankets, a large room, food and kindness. She thinks that the new people will suddenly take these things away from her to further torture her.

One of her rescuers, Stone, is a paranormal creature. We later find out that he is a shape-shifter and he can change into another human or animal.

For some reason, Stone is drawn to Audrey and the pull is so strong that he gets very possessive of her. He feels compelled to keep her safe and has to be with her constantly. He fights with other paranormal creatures if they touch her, talk to her for too long or take her away from him.

The first third of the book was very confusing to me. I didn’t understand who all the people were; I didn’t understand the world and the clans. Audrey’s paranormal identity was kept a secret for half of the book and while I enjoyed the reveal, the lack of information in the beginning made it difficult to follow.

I also thought that Stone was way too possessive of Audrey. He always had to be near her, touching her, staring at her, etc.

(Example: A paranormal that was known to Audrey asked her if she could come with him so they could speak privately. Audrey was in a bedroom with Stone when she was asked and she went willingly with the paranormal.

Audrey and the paranormal had a nice moment and I was y enjoying their time together when suddenly the door crashed in and there was Stone, rushing to Audrey’s side. She didn’t need any help and she wasn’t in any danger but he just couldn’t let her be with anyone else but him.)  

There were a few plot holes in the story (Audrey has one eye that’s cloudy and one eye that is normal. A character mentioned how her eyes were bright blue – which is impossible because one eye is always cloudy). Another plot hole: Stone, Audrey and other characters were going into a large conference room. Several sentences later, it was mentioned that they were in a small space.

There was another scene where three characters were talking and two were telling Stone about an event that happened in the past. That particular scene was very confusing and needed clarification. I read it ten times and I still could not figure out what had happened.

There were some spelling errors, grammatical errors. The author did mention that this book will be reedited so I will definitely read that.

Things I did not like:

1. There was a lot of repetitive information in the story. Audrey’s quirks were abundant and repeated constantly. Some of that could have been cut out. Her biting her lip later in the story could have been taken away – it wasn’t necessary to give her a new, distracting quirk (that and Stone’s possessiveness reminded me about Christian and Ana in Fifty Shades of Gray).

2. I also did not enjoy that repetitive comments about how Stone was so possessive about Audrey. It made me like him less as a character and thought that he was a bit overboard with his drastic actions and possessive comments.

3. I did not know that here was an appendix in the back of the book that explained who all the paranormal creatures were (the appendix was listed in the table of contents but it did not indicate that it was a glossary of the paranormals). If that was introduced in the beginning of the book, it might have helped me make sense of the first third of the story.

4. I liked Marcus but I found it difficult to understand what he was saying a lot of the time because it was written in a Scottish dialect.

Elijah was an interesting character. I really enjoyed reading about him and I hope to read more about him in the future.

Overall, the storyline was very interesting and I thought that the overall premise of the world was unique. I enjoyed the plot and the different types of characters, plus I found myself really getting into all the back stories of the paranormals.

Here is some advice that might make the book a little less confusing: There is an Appendix in the back of the book that explains the paranormal creatures. I recommend reading that first!

I give this book 3.5 paws.

I will definitely read the next book in the series.