Queen Heir (NYC Mecca #1)

I’ll admit first off I still haven’t finished this story and here’s why.

The beginning is fantastic. You’re immediately thrown into the action of the main character, Arianna, losing the queen, and having to compete against the other heirs for the crown. It’s pretty obvious from the get-go that she’s going to be queen, and I kinda wish there had been more…tension about her succeeding. But of course, Arianna is just slightly different from her other heirs, and flies through the challenges with little to no issue with results above everyone else. Which makes her nerves about not being crowned seem a little fake. After she is crowned is when the book lost me.

In a stereotypical way, she defies everyone’s suggestions of staying safe before her coronation and ventures out to central park where of course, everything goes wrong and they are attacked by the new antagonist, the fae. From here everything in the story felt like it turned into a muddled mess. The characters are not growing. If anything, it feels like they are getting dumber. The dialogue got stale, and the fae don’t make any sense. If they are SO much more powerful than the shifters, so much so that they can kill their queen without even leaving evidence, why don’t they just annihilate everyone? Maybe that’s later on the story but it seems to be a situation of a stereotypical all powerful villain that’s held back because…of no good reason other than there wouldn’t be a story otherwise.

Otherwise, the world building in this book is insanely good. I love the concept of the wolf shifters vs the bear shifters, as well as the male vs female hierarchy. And if this book does anything right it’s the romance! The budding romance and secret kiss between the bear king and Arianna, is amazing. It leaves you wanting more! It’s forbidden, but they have insanely genuine chemistry, and it’s just everything you want to route for.

All in all I will probably EVENTUALLY finish this book. I probably will even buy the sequel. It’s a decent read, but not the best that I’ve ever read.

The wolf shifter Queen has fallen, murdered in very suspicious circumstances. Now Arianna must battle it out with 3 other Queen Heirs for the crown. All the while trying to stay alive, searching for answers and avenging the dead.

Worldbuilding was good. It takes place in present time Earth. The supernaturals live next to the humans, though still, in secret. Mecca is the magic that flows through chrystals to the Queen and King respectively, and from them to their subjects, powering teleportation vortexes (pretty nifty actually) and such magic.
Wolf shifters and bear shifters have a (very) uneasy truce and with the unstable mecca, tension abounds. Scenes and environments were detailed enough without spelling out everything, making it easier for the mind to just fill in the blanks and continue with the story seamlessly.

Character development was decent. And this is the main issue I have with the book. Arianna is ‘too perfect’, while we know she has trained hard all her life, I think she would feel a lot more real if there were (for example) flashbacks or mentions of her training, or hardships that she faced.
Kade, our bear king, feels real and likeable. Though we know very little about him or his life. It just feels too ‘made’, it would have felt a lot better if we had more depth to the characters.

Saying that, by no means did I not enjoy the book! It was a nice and enjoyable read and I did pretty much read it in one go 🙂
The book is fast-paced, with just enough conversations between eating and fighting to carry the story onwards.

All in all, the plot is good and I want to know more about the characters and what happens next, so yes, I will be reading book 2.

This is book 1 in a series. So you get the first part of the story with a competition for Queen and a full investigation on the prior Queen’s death. However, the story continues. Be prepared to read the series. There is the start of a relationship, friendship, family and magic. The story is told from the heroine’s POV. I’ve read both these authors before and enjoy their books. If you like their other stories, you will like this too. I have in audio and ebook. I had to increase the speed on the audio to about 1.4x. I read more of the book than listened so check out the audio sample before buying. At the higher speed the narrator was OK, but not really a game changer as some narrator’s are.

3.5 stars. It was ok; not bad, not great. I do warn readers this is not a complete story. It continues into the next book and after reading book 2 & 3, they too are cliffhangers. There is little to no cursing but there is violence and mild sex in the books which might be a factor in the age allowed to read the books. I did like the H and h, which was one of the main reasons I gave it 3.5 stars. I also like shifter storylines. If you like this type of storyline you will likely like this book but I recommend waiting until the 4th and supposed to be final book is out and reading them all at once.

I love everything Jaymin Eve writes, and I love when she teams up with other authors. It’s so much fun to read something completely different with a familiar writing style. And this book with Leia Stone has it all: wolf shifters, bear shifters, magic, family, royalty, and a touch of forbidden romance. The only thing missing, in my opinion, is the humor usually associated with Jaymin Eve’s writing. However, the action makes up for it. Starting Queen Alpha immediately!

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