I was given a digital copy of Shannon Ahn’s Crossing Realms Part One in exchange for an honest review.
Crossing Realms piqued my interest from the first page. I knew I would love the story based on the blurb I’d read a while back, as I love stories about supernatural dreams.
Crossing Realms Part One is about a college graduate named Nina who lives a quiet life in what appears to be a pretty quiet town. Nina doesn’t seem to want for much except maybe a serious love interest, but she isn’t too desperate for that, either.
The story starts out as Nina experiences a vivid dream of completing her first solo mission as a secret agent and getting recruited into a top secret counter-intelligence division. There, she meets surprising versions of her friends and family and gains an attractive partner who she ends up spending most of her waking hours obsessing over. The dreams continue every time she sleeps.
The one sex scene that appears in the novel is one of the classier ones I’ve come across, and the author’s word choices didn’t make me cringe or feel embarrassed for her. If you’ve unwittingly stumbled upon some of those awkwardly written phrases and wrong choice of descriptive words in other books, you know what I’m talking about. Shannon Ahn manages to keep things realistic without alienating the modest reader, while giving enough detail to keep the us in the moment.
This is only the first part of the novella and I’m not sure how many parts will complete it, but I did feel that the author could have gone more in-depth and extended the scenes to show more first-hand recollections. Many of the scenes felt distant to me, and I believe the story could have been longer if she wanted it to be.
After the couple gets together, the dreams skip past all the cute “getting to know each other” moments. I feel like this makes more sense in retrospect now that I’ve finished than it did while I was reading. I felt a little disappointed that I missed all of that, even though its reason was explained at the end. The fact that the author managed to make me want to know more about the details of the characters’ lives translates as a success to me. And, I felt like I was in the moment during the action scenes.
The story itself entertained me the entire time, and there wasn’t even one moment where I felt I had to push through. I actually wanted to read every sentence, and for me, these days, that’s a surprise. I feel like the pacing was pretty good and I truly enjoyed reading the book.
I’m also not usually a fan of secret agent movies or books, so my instant take to Crossing Realms Part One was a pleasant surprise as that is a huge element throughout the story. It seemed like the author did her research and made everything believable.
There were many twists and turns that I didn’t expect and the ending was satisfying enough that it answered most of my questions while leaving me with new ones and an assurance that the rest would likely be answered in the next one.
I recommend this book for a short and intriguing read, and I will be waiting for the second part’s release.
You can get your copy of Crossing Realms for only 99 cents right here.
You can also get it for free through Kindle Unlimited.
Jessica V. Fisette 