MacRieve (Immortals after Dark #14) by Kresley Cole

Note: The book reviewed contains themes only appropriate for those over the age of 18.

Uilleam MacRieve appeared on the fringes of previous stories quite a lot and I felt like it was high time to pick up his story.

I had a rather long break from reading this series, but you can always count on Kresley Cole to sum things up enough to make you remember the important parts from the past instalments without making the story tedious.

So, we meet Uilleam – okay, I will go with Will, because that spelling is finger-breaking – a few weeks after the escape from the prison in book #11 as a broken man, plagued both by the ordeal he went through on the island as by the past wounds the experience re-opened, dinking himself to a stupor every day and planning a trip to the immortals’ suicide cove.

Enter Chloe Todd, a professional football (sorry, an European here, seeing the word ‘soccer’ hurts my brain) player about to see her life dreams come true by competing at the Olympics, who is suddenly faced not only about the existence of the supernatural and becoming one of them, but also with the fact that her father is not who she thought he was, but none other than Preston Webb, the sinister leader of the Order that hunts supernatural beings.

While everyone in the Lore is hell-bent on seeking out their revenge against Webb through his daughter, Will hides his fated mate to keep her safe, unaware that she is about to come into her immortality as one of the species he detests from the bottom of his heart for all he has suffered because of one of them as just a boy.

And that is when the real problems start. Fortunately, between these two idiots who could have avoided much trouble had they only communicated – although I have to give props to Kresley Cole: Will’s inability to communicate about his past trauma is very realistic – Chloe is rational enough to put some things together on her own and thus finds in herself enough patience for Will to catch up and do his part of psychological and emotional heavy lifting as well, eventually.

My heart broke for Will in regard to certain aspects of his backstory, but I loved that she picked a male protagonist to deal with that, because it is all too often that males are dismissed as potential victims and I loved how Kresley Cole dealt with that particular topic.

And finally, Kresley Cole managed to surprise me with the Ubus people, of whom we have been told again and again in the series that they are evil, but of course there is more to that than that and I absolutely loved the twist regarding that species and I would love to see more of them now, with everything we learned in MacRieve.