The Shape of Desire

I had read several negative reviews of this book and was hoping that the early readers had overlooked something, but I'm afraid I have to agree with the nay-sayers. This is a disappointing sub-par effort for the author of the wonderful Samaria and Mystic & Rider series. The heroine pines away for her shape-shifting lover, but Shinn never makes a case for why Dante is worth sacrificing almost everything else in Maria's life. She works, she comes home and waits for Dante, he returns every few weeks and they have mind-blowing sex, he leaves, and the cycle starts over. Repeat ad nauseum. The novel starts with the relationship in its 15th year so we don't even get a chance to see how it developed until a too-little, too-late flashback late in the book. The pace is slow and repetitive, and nothing really happens until at least halfway through the novel. The reader doesn't have much invested in the relationship between Maria and Dante so the frequent sex is pointless. The only thing that saved the book for me was the St. Louis setting (my hometown).

I was not completely won over by Shinn's previous novel, Troubled Waters, but I'd much prefer she return to that series instead of continuing this one. It feels like a half-hearted attempt to jump on the Twilight bandwagon, when Shinn should have stuck to the fantasy worlds she creates so well.