Audiobook Review: Crush (Crave #2)

Author: Tracy Wolff

Narrators: Heather Costa & Tim Paige

Audiobook Length: 18 hours 8 minutes

Everything feels off—especially me. I’ve returned to Katmere Academy, but I’m haunted by fragments of days I have no recollection of living and struggling to understand who, or what, I really am.

Just when I start to feel safe again, Hudson is back with a vengeance. He insists there are secrets I don’t know about, threatening to drive a wedge between Jaxon and me forever. But far worse enemies are at our doorstep.

The Circle is caught in a power play and the Vampire Court is trying to drag me out of my world and into theirs. The only thing Hudson and Jaxon agree on is that leaving Katmere would mean my certain death.

And not only am I fighting for my life, but now everyone else’s is at stake—unless we can defeat an unspeakable evil. All I know is that saving the people I love is going to require sacrifice.

Maybe more than I’m able to give.

Find It On: Goodreads / Amazon (Novel) / Amazon (Box Set 1-4)

** Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon, and I may earn a small commission, at no cost to you, if you purchase through my links. It’s a nice way for me to continue my love of books and feed my reading addiction.**

Crush is the second novel in the Crave series that continues where the first novel left off. Readers are transported back to Katmere Academy in Alaska following along four months where Grace is trying to adapt to her new paranormal identity and no memory of the time that has passed. In this novel, the world is expanded and explored more as the different magical beings, the politics, and the details of the universe are given a deeper dive. This gave me a lot of hope as a reader as I felt this novel was finally different than a Twilight-style series.

In this story, Jaxon felt like an entirely different character as it seemed he made a 180 in favor of his brother, Hudson shining. It felt as if the author needed to make Jaxon look bad to make Hudson look better. While I am all for Hudson outshining Jaxon and being the more likable and memorable brother to reader, I wish there was more consistency with Jaxon. Hudson’s humor and darkness really carried a lot of this novel as it helped distract me from the other elements that I do not feel were well written. As the main protagonist of the series, I was thrilled to get to know Grace more outside of her obsessive attraction to Jaxon, but I am not quite sure I enjoyed what I learned. She has a lot of selfish qualities which distracted from her actual turmoil. I am hoping now that there is more focus on her personality traits outside of Jaxon, there will be more development in her character.

As for the romance, originally, I thought this novel was going to go in the direction of Twilight where there is a second love interest, but there is never a real chance for them. Then, I thought it was ACOTAR where the second one is introduced and the first becomes irrelevant. There are strong connections still to both of those series, ACOTAR a lot more though, so originally this is what I was deciding between for Grace’s story; however, when Grace becomes a gargoyle at the beginning of this novel, this triggered me to remember another series, The Dark Elements trilogy. Novel one featured one love interest, the second was the other, and the third is when the heroine finally chose one of them. Based on this second love interest’s character traits, it is pretty much a fanfiction-y feel for The Dark Elements, which means it is really easy to guess how this series will end in terms of the romance. Since this is all my own train of thought, I guess I’ll have to just wait and see if I am right or not, especially because the series is not finished yet.

Even though this novel is over 700 pages, it did not feel that long. I do believe there are a lot of places that could be cut, but it still went by quickly. The author has a great writing style where it is an easy read and it makes you, as the reader, want to not put the novel down. I enjoyed the general pieces that made up this story, but it was the transitions that lacked execution. Wolff seemed to follow in Maas’s footsteps for this and it was something I did not enjoy in either of the series I read by Maas. I understand the many plotlines and character journeys that Wolff is going for, but I cannot connect to any of the transitions. For me, they are poorly done, and I just have to hold out hope that the other pieces from the series make me forget, which has happened in other series that had similar issues.

The romance is a huge focus of this story, so I guess I was lucky as I felt there was nothing outside of sexual tension between Jaxon and Grace in the first novel. A second love interest is not what bothered me, but I still wish how this all played out was done better, which was my core issue of this novel. Those that were set on Team Jaxon will most likely not connect at all with this story, but there is still room for improvement in the overall execution of the series. I hope the next novel does a better job and makes me want to keep reading!