Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - Caressed by Ice

Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh

8 reviews

allingoodtime's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

While there have been peeks at the SnowDancer pack, this story dives deeper. Brenna is a member of the SnowDancer pack and her rescue from a psychotic Psy featured in the first book in this series. The Laurens, a group of Psys who escaped the Psy net, have been taken in by the SnowDancer pack. Judd is the least trusted by the pack because of his very typical Psy persona. Yet Brenna, who craves touch, is drawn to Judd who cannot tolerate touch. Brenna and Judd working through their feelings for each other, as well as some targeted attacks on Brenna, keep this story moving.

Because of the nature of Judd’s Psy abilities, there are also a lot of fail-safes built into him from his conditioning. This means this story is a bit of a slow burn. Judd literally starts falling apart the more he feels emotionally and the more he is touched physically. Yet to override these fail-safes, Judd may be opening himself up to the accidental use of his powers. This could mean death to those around him.

Brenna is not about to give up on Judd and he gets to the point where he cannot let her go. Their link is wonderful, especially when there are so many that do not understand it. Brenna must also deal with her prejudice against the Psy, which is understandable after what happened to her. There is a wonderful scene between her and one of the Psy children that helped her to work through some of her issues, and will hopefully pave the way for more acceptance of the Laurens in the SnowDancer pack.

I loved getting to know more about the SnowDancer pack and getting some deeper insights into some of the DarkRiver pack. This was another fantastic story in this series.

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smuttymcbookface's review

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dark medium-paced

3.0

I decided to give this series one final book before giving up on it, because I read that this was the book where the plot began to develop. Unfortunately, I just don't like the writing anyway.

Nalini Singh is the definition of women writing men. You will find many unironic statements like "his pure unadulterated maleness" in all of these books. I thought I'd appreciate this one more because it was a female changeling, meaning that it wasn't a man harassing a woman into a sexual relationship like the others. And, don't get me wrong, I did appreciate the relationship more in this book compared to Slave to Sensation and Visions of Heat. But the writing was still too much.

Although the plot was developed further in this, and it did seem like a good plot, I found myself bored. I felt like things dragged on, and events happened just to keep the book going. I loved the development of these two, but I did find Brenna annoying because of how Nalini Singh has written women changelings as every "emotional" stereotype you can think of.

In addition to that, the writing just felt lazy at times. Chapters ended and started mid conversation with seemingly no reasoning but to add a new chapter. The writing was unrepentantly sexist. And some characters seemed to be everywhere just because.

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givemaribooks's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is my favorite of the couples in the series after the one from the first book. I think they were great together and I liked how it was her pursuing the relationship. It was a nice change of pace from all the alpha shifter being pushy in the other books. I do think the pacing was a bit off, and there were parts of the book that felt very slow. I also do not think that the sexual assault was necessary for the story. She had suffered enough, so there was no need to add that aspect only as a plot device. It did not add anything to the story considering all the other trauma she was already suffering from, so it felt unnecessary and gratuitous.

The book is a bit outdated, especially when it came to ableist language.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator is great, especially voicing the psy characters.

CW: murder, kidnapping, torture (recounted), sexual assault (recounted), PTSD

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sunnysky's review

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dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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nbeckham's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This is a fine paranormal romance but I didn’t love it. I think I’m just not feeling the genre right now. Did love how Brennas trauma was treated, I thought that was handled well.

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severelyhopefulcloud's review

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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just_one_more_paige's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

One more day, one more Psy-Changeling book down in my 2021 end-of-year paranormal romance series binge extravaganza.

In this third installation, we jump over to the SnowDancer Pack of wolf changelings. Our female MC is Brenna, the same Brenna who was kidnapped/tortured by the evil Psy serial killer (no spoilers = I won’t name names) and saved at the last minute in the first book in the series. She is back with her Pack, but her overprotective brothers won’t let her out of their sight and she’s chafing. Plus, although she survived and brought herself back, she is (of course) dealing with myriad PTSD issues. Judd Lauren, on the other hand, is a Psy defector, taken in by the SnowDancers when he ran from the Psy along with his (surviving) family, who were all sentenced to rehabilitation. He’s cold as ice, was trained that way because of his particularly dangerous Psy ability, and his years as an assassin for them. However, he was there, lending his power to Sascha, during Brenna’s initial recovery, and even though her mind is in danger and her connection to her wolf side not what it used to be, and Judd refuses to give up his emotional control because it may cause her harm, their bond is strong enough to keep pulling them together. They’ll just have to fight for it.

Phew. This was a much more intense book than the first two, even considering the unexpected violence/death that the first one brought. Brenna’s experiences at the hands of the Psy who tortured her in every way (physically, emotionally, psychologically) are brutal. And though she shares them with Judd slowly, over the course of the book, they’re still a lot. Like for real, I recommend being very careful in picking this one up if you have any history of violence against your mind/body in any way, because there’s no holding back in the descriptions here. It could easily be categorized as trauma porn, and yet it also felt like a very real portrayal of what PTSD after that type of trauma could/would look like. And though it’s not the first trauma that comes to mind while reading, Judd’s psychological conditioning, the way his “gifts” were used against him and the things he was forced to do/experience from a young age, is (apples to oranges, but still) on par with Brenna’s own experiences. It sets them up for the potential to be very unhealthy, but also, as the reader hopes is the case here, particularly right for each other. It was great to see that develop, and really more slowly and steadily and on equal footing than in the past two books as well, which was a nice change of pace (Brenna’s claws, her wolf intensity on par with Judd’s dominance, really stole the show here for me). As a side-ish note here, though the build takes a while, I have to say that the sex scenes, when they happened, were the best of the three books so far, in description and detail and intensity and length. So yea, that was lovely.

The sibling relationships portrayed here, past even the closeness of the Pack connections, felt spot on, in their strength and their stifling-ness. And I loved seeing more of Hawke (his attitude in the past, especially picking at Lucas about Sascha) has always brought a smile to my face. Seeing him more in action here has me very excited for his future book (and I have an inkling where it’s going already too…). The last thing about this book that I want to mention is what it does to move forward the Psy-changeling portion of the story. Like yea, it was all about Judd and Brenna, and that was great (and the introduction of the in-Pack evil, which did a nice job balancing out what was threatening to become an unrealistically “good” Pack vs “bad” Psy dichotomy, as well as bringing some retribution that Brenna was able to take part in). But also, there was a ton of forward movement in the overall world itself. The connection of Judd to the “Ghost” within the PsyNet, as well as the few interactions of those on the Psy Council that we got to see, gave interesting detail into the plans of the Psy, the attempts to take down the changeling threat, and the internal faction fighting against the terrifying hive mind implant plans of the Council. Plus seeing the way the dominant predatory changelings interact with and protect the other changeling species (hyena, deer), and seeing the DarkRiver and SnowDancer collaboration through eyes from the other side, added more depth as well. I would have loved to see more Vaughn and Faith and/or Sascha and Lucas, but we got some and I get that as I go further in, there’s no way to get all the characters authentic page time.

A solid third book and I’m just as set on blasting through these books as before – the interest holds. So you know I’ve already got book four downloaded and I’m interested to see where the larger story-arc goes, as well as dive into the next mated pair romance!

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rivercat0338's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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