Book Review: Deceptive Inheritance
This is my book review of Deceptive Inheritance by Jennifer Anne Davis.
Laney Lake transfers to Stonemore University with a plan: two years of freedom before real life drags her back home. After a lifetime of overprotective parents and careful rules, she’s determined to finally live by making friends, saying yes more often, and experiencing the things she’s always been told to avoid.
Then Rowan Ward notices her.
To the rest of campus, he’s the rugby captain. He’s charming, confident, and impossible to miss. To himself, he’s a werewolf barely maintaining control. Rowan is the next alpha, bound to a future already chosen for him. His girlfriend is perfect on paper. She’s from a powerful bloodline, unquestioned loyalty, and the one his father expects him to marry. It should be enough.
It isn’t.
Laney pulls at him in a way nothing ever has, stripping control down to instinct and want. He knows he should stay away. Instead, he watches her. Circles her. Fights urges that feel older than reason.
Laney doesn’t know what he’s hiding. She only knows that when he’s near, her body wakes up and she’s warm, restless, and painfully aware of how badly she wants him to touch her. As Laney leans into her stolen freedom and Rowan teeters on the edge of breaking every rule he’s sworn to follow, old laws begin to strain. Because Laney isn’t ordinary. And if Rowan’s world discovers why she matters, choosing her could cost him everything.
She wanted two years of fun.
He was never supposed to want her.
But some instincts don’t care about rules.
And some sparks are born to burn.
Review (Or book report??):
Deceptive Inheritance is the book you read when you want authentic-feeling characters. As college kids in their early twenties just starting to figure out life, this book hit every nail on the head when it came to the cast. We have supportive girls-girls. Less supportive bromances. A constant need to prove themselves. And even the cringiest moments that gave me severe secondhand embarrassment. This book is 100% character driven. The plot, the mystery, the forbidden romance ... none of it would be as interesting if it wasn't for those it was affecting.
Laney is reasonably relatable–especially for those of us who've lived a sheltered life. Watching her force herself to do new things, slowly develop a backbone (and I do mean slowly), fall in lust against her will, and overall learn to balance what she knows with what she doesn't, she felt ... realistic. Now, we'd all like to think, "oh, if someone told me XYZ, I'd react like FGH" but we don't really know. For everything that's thrown at her, I feel like her reaction is more in line with college kid mentality, and all of her decisions are based upon the information she has at the time, which I appreciated.
Rowan, by contrast, feels more complex. Laney is studious, has mommy issues to high heaven, but wants to have new experiences. In those respects, she's very well put together and her time on the page reflects all three of those things regularly.
Rowan, however, feels like he's trying to be three people at once: the next alpha, the college rugby captain, and himself. Before Laney, you get the feeling that he was pretty good at balancing them. Alpha heir him was dating his future wife. Rugby captain him was keeping his grades up and leading his team to victory time and time again. As for himself? Well, he kept trying to murder that poor guy every time a stray thought conflicted with either of his other selves.
With Laney's arrival, it feels like Rowan has a 'find himself' exploration as the book progresses. It's especially interesting when he learns little things about Laney's upbringing and compares it to his own. Things she considers novelty experiences, he regards as everyday. So watching him rediscover joy for little things simply by sharing that with her was a fun little addition. It also forces him to reflect on the decisions being made for him rather than by him, which I feel safe in classifying as the major conflict in the entire story.
Oh, don't get me wrong, there is conflict. There are laws, and the people that enforce them. Laney's mere existence quickly puts the entire Stonemore pack in the crosshairs. The majority of the enforcers' involvement occurs offscreen more than on, however. In some ways, that made them a more effective threat, because their movements were unknown, and it ratcheted up the anxiety. Until it didn't. The closer you got to the end of the book, the less significant they felt as a credible threat.
That said, Laney's fear and confusion is predictable because it's exactly how she should feel. But Rowan's parts always offer a rollercoaster of emotions as he is tossed between duty and desire. In this case, I would very much classify Rowan as the drama. And he brings so much of it on himself, it's rage-inducing sometimes.
Okay, before this turns into an entire dissertation...
If you like werewolves, you'll probably like this book.
If you like college romances, this is definitely the book for you.
If you like fated mates types of books, read this one.
And if you don't mind being subjected to yet another cliffhanger ending from Jennifer Anne Davis, you're in for a fun read. (And you won't have long to wait before book 2 is released!)
Now, if you're expecting a full Omega-verse kind of novel, this won't scratch that itch. It's ... omega-verse-light. This is what you give a friend to see how they feel about werewolves before you let them dive into ... that. Hope that clears that up.
Overall, my rating would be 4.5 stars. Only because I think this book could have packed an even greater punch and done more with the world had the author given herself more time to explore it. I'm expecting even better things from the rest of the series.
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