Review: All for You by Dana Marie Bell

I was looking forward to reading this book. But a few pages in, I was bothered by all the similarities to another book I recently read and didn’t like. Woman with a brutal, abusive, evil ex-lover is living in terror, but she has a wonderful family, and her protective older brother assigns one of his close friends to watch over her. In the last book I read the friend was a former SEAL, in this case, he’s a nephilim – though no one knows that. Not sure why the brother felt so confident putting his little sister in the hands of an architect, but whatever.

My biggest problem with this story was the main character, Abby. She’s so weak and unable to take care of herself. She’s terrified one moment, so frightened she’s crying and fainting from fear and then she’s deciding that she’s going to leave and take care of herself and protect her family and friends on her own – only to be rescued moments later by Seth. This happens several times in the book. Got old after a while. Also, she acts so goofy and immature. Her thoughts and behavior seemed more along the lines of a silly teenager than an adult woman who had been through a harrowing tragedy. So many times I found myself actually rolling my eyes after reading parts of this book. Things like her getting out of bed and dancing around the room naked or one scene where she got sloppy drunk while waiting for Seth to finish a phone call. An adult woman should not be that unaware of her alcohol tolerance.

I never quite understood why Seth was so drawn to her – other than a desire to protect her because she was in danger. She didn’t seem especially smart or clever, just very, very needy. As for the sex in the book — I’d hoped that would make up for the weak character — it was okay, but a little silly at times. Abby never seemed to move past the idea that she was finally living out her teenage fantasy of hooking up with her older brother’s hot friend.

But the book did hold my interest. I thought the storyline was intriguing. There’s quite a bit of danger and action. This is the first book in a series, and I think the world of Nephilims who hunt Shemyaza holds a lot of potential. I thought for the first book in a series, this world was explained well, I didn’t feel lost or confused about what was happening. There were several other characters introduced in the book I would like to know more about. They seemed stronger and more intelligent than the characters featured in this book. So even though I didn’t love this book, I am interested in reading future books in this series.

I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley.