The Guardians by Lisa Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sloane Jacobs has been on the edge of crazy for a long time now. That happens when you can read everyone’s aura, not what they show on the outside but what they’re really like. Knowing that sharing her curse would get her a one-way ticket to the loony bin, Sloane lives alone and trusts no one. 

That changes when she meets Liam McDougall, a Gray One; the only kind that she can’t read. She doesn’t know what he is exactly but members of his team are disappearing and they need her skills to help them. 

Sloane jumps headlong into their hidden world. Her skills develop with their help only to find that sentient animals, the fae, gargoyles and other creatures of imagination might not be just entertaining stories teaching her in the hardest way that no one is what they seem.

The Guardians

Exciting storyline!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💜💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 😠😘🤓🥰

The heroine: Sloane – she is an elementary school bus driver. She is different than anyone she knows in that she can see and read the aura of everyone she comes across. Which means she knows what kind of person they are and what they are thinking about. The only ones she can’t read are what she calls “the grey ones”. They have a grey aura, and she can’t read them at all, though they always seem to calm her down. She nearly goes crazy when she is around a lot of people, like at a wedding, and she has to drink to tamper down how it all affects her.

The Hero: Liam – he is a guardian, a gargoyle shifter whose job it is to protect humanity. He is also quite a playboy, though he is generally the one and done type of guy who gets interested in just about any lady until he has had her, then his interest is over. The guardian council most recently put him on a job in Tampa, Florida and he is looking into the disappearance of three guardians, one of whom is his good friend Joseph.

The Story: Liam sees Sloane at a bookstore and is immediately interested in her. He can’t get enough of her long legs and enticing scent. So much so that he follows her to a coffee shop and then to her home. Sloane, on the other hand, also noticed Liam as soon as she sees him in the coffee shop, though he flusters her. Which is odd since he is a grey one and they usually calm her. She immediately runs out of the place, since she knows that men aren’t for her. She has enough trouble trying to keep her sanity without adding a man to the mix.

It turns out that Liam and his friends know exactly what Sloane is and they can help her while in turn, she can help them. Lately I have been trying to find some different types of paranormal books, and this seemed like a good one. It does definitely have some different types of supernatural people with abilities that are not seen in every other paranormal book.

However, too often the big bad is a group of humans that are doing research and experimentation on supernaturals. This book is no different. There are some supporting characters that have something to do with that subplot, like this kid named Andy who is an orphan in a group home, he finds that he is a Phaser; he can heal, has super-speed and hearing, and can ‘phase’ through walls. There is a doctor at his group home who is doing some terrible things.

There is also a nurse named Verity who works at a psychiatric hospital where some less than above board things are going on and she knows about them. She became a nurse to help people and she doesn’t know what to do or how to get herself out of the situation. She serves food to a bunch of different supernatural beings who are locked in cells.

Sloane also has some darkness in her life. Her stepfather makes her smoothies which turned out to be drugged. He also has some weird hold on Sloane’s mother. I know all this will end up being related to the mission Liam is currently working on, but it was all a bit jumbled and piecemeal during the first half of the book.

Though I must say, there was a ton of action in this book and it focused more on the story about supernaturals than the romance between Sloane and Liam, though there was still some of that. I have been in a mood lately where I like a little romance with my action and adventure, more so than liking a bit of action and adventure with my romance. So this book certainly fit the bill on that.

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