Overall, I really liked this book. I found the characters of Cerise and William interesting and sympathetic, and their love story believable. Their banter made me chuckle quite a few times, and I always love it when a book can make me laugh. Also, I thought it was interesting to read a story where the heroine was basically a hillbilly in the swamp, part of a large, ridiculous family. However, there were also a few problems:-The writing wasn't always even. There were a few spots that were just awkwardly written, which would take me out of the story and make me wonder "Couldn't they have smoothed that out a little in the editing process??"-There were far too many names to keep track of. Between the Hand's freaks and Cerise's family, I had a very hard time keeping people straight. This is a book that definitely would have benefitted from a family tree at the front, and a little list of the Hand's agents, with maybe a one to two word descriptor of each ("Hunter," "Plant guy," "Assassin," etc.)-Minor quibble, but I felt the final misunderstanding between William and Cerise was just unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the book, and seemed silly after all that had gone before. Still, this book hooked me and kept me reading, and I'm looking forward to reading the next two in this series. My Review:Overall.... 4.0Performance... 5.0Story.... 3.5I love audiobooks, but unless I'm on a roadtrip, I only get about an hour a week to listen to them. This audiobook was 16 hours long and I only had one small roadtrip when I got to listen to it. As a result, this book took me about 6 weeks to get through. That was entirely too long and I think it affected how much I enjoyed the book overall.This is a complex world and a complex story, but at the heart of it were Cerise and her family who live in the swamps. William is a changeling...i.e. a wolf shifter...and her love interest. The overall story line was very layered with intrigue and levels of interest from the three different levels of this world. But I'll be honest with you...because it took me so long to get through it...the politics of who all was after what and who was working with whom, got completely lost for me. For me, this book remained about Cerise and William and their developing relationship which I did really enjoy. For William, being a changeling is not something good in this world. The world considers them feral and tried to kill them all at some point. So he never lets most people know what he is. For Cerise, she doesn't give a damn what he is and I absolutely LOVED that about her. Cerise is one tough cookie and she does what she wants (unless it will hurt her family) and then she does what's good for the family. She's loyal to a fault, tough, but so wanting for a life and the love that she finds with William. For him, he's never even considered that he could find the happiness that he does with Cerise. He is also really tough, but has a vulnerability which just tore at my heart because he wants to belong somewhere so badly. I loved him in book #1 and fell even further for him in this story. There is a LOT to this story...a lot of characters, a lot of layers of politics, and I'm not going to get into all that. I will say that something that the team of Ilona Andrews does incredibly well is adding children to the story. In book #1 there were Georgie and Jack (which we get to see again in this book ...yay) and then this one had Lark and the boy that I can't remember his name that William takes under his wing. They added so much impact to the story with very little overall page time. And I can't do an audiobook review without mentioning Renee Raudman's INCREDIBLE narration. Wow. There are SO MANY characters in this book and each one sounds distinctly different. I don't know how she does it. Even the kids from book #1, Jack and Georgie...sounded exactly the same as they did in book #1. She has to have over 100-150 voices in her repertoire and it boggles my mind.I have to admit, I'm on the fence about book #3. These absolutely are the kinds of books I enjoy on audio, but that one's 14 hours. But it also features Kaldar...who I loved in this book. Maybe I will just sit down and read that one and save the shorter books for my audio enjoyment.
Do You like book Spiegeljagd (2011)?
I loved this. I am rushing to the library to get another "Edge" novel.
—rach
Nice..ending wrapped up too quickly. I still prefer On the Edge...
—Thrina
3.5 stars, can't to read the last two in the series!
—Kelly
