Review: "Immortal Beloved" by Cate Tiernan

Title: Immortal Beloved
Series: Immortal Beloved #1
Author: Cate Tiernan
Publisher: Poppy
Year: 2012
















"Nastasya has spent the last century living as a spoiled, drugged-out party girl. She feels nothing and cares for no one. But when she witnesses her best friend, a Dark Immortal, torture a human, she realizes something's got to change. She seeks refuge at a rehab for wayward immortals, where she meets the gorgeous, undeniably sexy Reyn, who seems inexplicably linked to her past.

Nastasya finally begins to deal with life, and even feels safe--until the night she learns that someone wants her dead.

Cate Tiernan, author of the popular Sweep series, returns with an engaging story of a timeless struggle and inescapable romance, the first book in a stunning new fantasy trilogy."


This book makes me go:”Hmmmm.” 

At first it was really hard to find something to make me stick with this. I am so used to books being very action-filled, where something big is at stake all the time, either in the characters life or in the world (or both). Which made “Immortal Beloved” feel very very slow. It’s like this really slow creature that walks in front of you and even if you poke it with a stick, urging it to go faster, it just looks at you, but keeps going at the same pace. At first you walk behind it slowly and mumble to yourself, but after that gets boring you start staring the slow plot in front of you and realize it has a nice behind. And if you could just see the rest of it, then all of it might be nice. Which is my way of saying that after I got used to the slow plot I realized it is actually a very good book.

Despite the slow pace of this story, it has quite an important message. I like how it did not overly glorify immortality. How, even if immortal, you live through poverty, famine and even though you do not die, those dear to you still might. Also, after a long time things start to blur together and you stop finding joy in everyday things and how important it is to get that feeling back. In the end I had to salute Cate Tiernan once again, because she obviously knows how to make you think but ease you into it, as to not scare you away.

Okay, so the story is about a girl named Nastasya who, after a freak occurrence, realizes that the path she is on only leads to destruction and she has to run from her old life and try and piece herself together. I think the blurb makes this story sound a lot more dramatic than it is. It still has all these elements, but the word rehab is really not the best thing to call where she is going. And the story with Reyn is a lot more complicated. My advice: Read it, it will be different than it sounds, but in a good way.

Nastasya was an interesting lead. At first I did not like how she seemed to pity herself and even she did not know why she is doing it. But she really grew into herself. She was obviously one of these characters for whom a life-changing experience was long overdue. And with a little nudging she went with it nicely.
Reyn was one of those brooding characters that usually tends to annoy me but he had such a good back story (actually this book was filled with great characters with great back stories) that in the end I kind of had to like him. I also liked how the romance was very unhurried here.
There were many characters in Rivers Edge. River herself, the people who were there to get the same so-called treatment as Nasty did. All of them great to read. Nelly might have been a little oversimplified, but it did not bother me much.
There were also Nastasya’s friends from before. They were over the top and loud and a complete contrast. By themselves they would have fallen flat but in this book they gave the story that little extra it needed.

“Immortal Beloved” might take a little while to get into, but the overall journey is definitely worth the slow start. It gets 4 well-earned stars from me.

 This review has been brought to you by your Book Mistress for the day.

-Linda