Review: Storm Echo by Nalini Singh
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Title: Silver Silence (Psy-Changeling Trinity #6)
Author: Nalini Singh
Date of publication: 26 July 2022
Genre: Paranormal romance, shifters
Author's links:
Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb
Silence has fallen. The Psy are free to feel emotion. Free to love. But Silence was never a prison for Ivan Mercant. The biggest threat to his future lies dormant in his brain—a psychic monster that wants only to feed. And now, the brutal leash he’s kept on that monster is slipping. He prepared for this day, for the end of Ivan Mercant . . . but that was before he met Lei.
As primal as she is human, this wild changeling brings color into his life, laughter to his soul. Then the dream shatters in a rain of blood, in silent bodies in the snow. Lei is gone. Vanished without a trace . . . until he meets strangely familiar eyes across a busy San Francisco street.
Soleil Bijoux Garcia is a healer who has lost everything. She exists in a world of desolate aloneness . . . till the day she finds herself face-to-face with a lethal stranger. The animal who is her other half knows this man, but her memories are tattered fragments. Sorrow and a need for vengeance are all that drive her. Her mission? To kill the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard pack.
But fate has other plans. Soon, a deadly soldier who believes himself a monster and a broken healer might be all that stand between life and death for the entire Psy race. . .
Review
This is another great installment in a favourite series. Psys getting together with changelings are my favourite couples, so much passion and restraint, funny first-time moments, pure joy to read.
Every new book in the series is like a homecoming - a familiar world with a complex overarching suspense plot. And every time Nalini Singh manages to surprise me, to make the romance feel fresh and new.
We get a bit of amnesia plot and while I am not a fan of it in general, I didn't mind it here. The twist was that because the mating has already taken place (unawares for both of them, mind you), the animal side of Lei remembered Ivan.
The suspense/mystery plot gets more and more complicated but we see a possibility for solution here which I liked and felt was the right place and time for it.
Like most stories in the series at this stage we get to catch up on a number of familiar characters. Many of the cats make an appearance - Lucas, Nate, Tamsyn and they are as good as ever.
I loved how to story offered the possibility for family, future, something Ivan had given up on.
Most often the Psy have no experience with feelings and intimacy but as highly logical beings they do proper research of the matter. There is even a guidebook circulated among friends that someone made in the previous books iirc. Ivan, though, didn't research sex/intimate relationships because he didn't think it will ever happen to him. When it came to physical intimacy, he let Lei lead him. His complete trust in her was a thing of beauty for me.
A central element in Ivan's story was drug abuse (not him directly) and its consequences. I found the descriptions to be really detailed and very jarring at times. Seeing it from a child's POV made it extra hard to read. The whole series does not shy away from darkness - abuse, both physical and mental is a common theme for many of the books. Still, the drug use here hit me extra hard and I wanted to mention it explicitly.
In the end we got the HEA for our couple, the overarching suspense plot moved a few steps towards resolution and we got a whole new possible plotline opened. That is all to say that I very much enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to the next in the series.
I find it difficult to list CWs for this series but what stood out for me in the book is: drug abuse, parent neglect, loss, car accident (in the past), attempted murder with grave injuries, psychic violence
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