Review: Echo Falls

Review: Echo Falls

Title: Echo Falls

Author: Jaime McDougall

Pages: 283

Rating: ****

Review Source: The Author Jaime McDougall

Back of Book Synopsis (from goodreads.com):

Running from a nightmare stalking her every move, Phoebe Martin arrives in Echo Falls hoping she has finally found a safe place to stop. But trouble has a way of catching up and soon the signs are there. 

After a vicious attack in an alley, policeman Aidan O'Bryan is left with Phoebe as his only path to understanding why the Echo Falls werewolf pack - his pack - is being attacked. When another pack member is killed, Phoebe is forced to confront her past before she loses Aidan and everything she has come to love.

Love and duty become one as Aidan strives to prevent Phoebe from becoming the next victim. But with Phoebe just as determined to protect Aidan and her new home, secrets from her past threaten to tear them apart. 

Will love give Phoebe the strength to trust Aidan and face her fears, or will her past destroy her future? 

My Thoughts:

Whenever I read a book about Vampires, Witches, or Werewolves, I am always looking to see how the author explains their creation or existence. I really liked the way Jaime McDougall explains werewolves with the legend of Echo Falls and the way the legend foreshadowed (maybe more paralleled) the events surrounding Aiden and Phoebe at the end of the book.

“When the native tribes still lived in the area a long time ago, there was once a young chief from one tribe and a young woman from another tribe who were going to be married. Their marriage was going to make an alliance between the tribes, but they were lucky enough to be in love, too.

A man from another tribe saw the alliance as a threat and he wanted the woman to marry him, but the woman turned him away. He wouldn’t accept her refusal. The night before the wedding, the night of the true full moon, he kidnapped her and brought her to [the Echo Falls] waterfalls. When she still refused to marry him, he hid her deep in the caves. The chief went to meet his bride in secret that same night and found her missing, but she managed to leave a trail for him. He went to the caves searching for her, hearing her echoing cries. When he couldn’t find her, he pleaded with the gods to help him and they turned the lovers into wolves so they could have the strength and the senses to find each other. But they were still lost to each other. The chief begged for more time, but the gods wouldn’t let him abandon his people so he had to return to human form in the morning.

He returned to search for his mate every night as a wolf and had to turn back into a human every morning. He became the first werewolf. That is why [they] can only transform at night. [They] have to return to [their] humanity during the day. And [they] have to turn in to a werewolf at every full moon as a symbol of the first night the chief turned into a wolf and searched for his lover, his other half.

They say you can still hear their lonely howls if you are near the falls during the full moon as they still search for each other.”

Echo Falls started with action right out of the gate with Phoebe being chased by a killer. (and the action continues throughout the book with some great fight scenes) She survives the attack thanks to hunky Alpha Wolf/ police officer Aiden. She has a lot of secrets that come to light as the story progresses. I really liked that she was such a mystery and that she could did not want to rely on Aiden or his pack to take care of her. Often times in paranormal romances, the woman plays the damsel in distress and that gets kind of old. I love that Phoebe is a butt kicking woman who protects others.

Echo Falls was really well written I only spotted one or two editing errors and it was a fast and engrossing read that I would recommend to fans of the paranormal romance genre.

It was a fast and engrossing read and I would recommend it to fans of Paranormal romance.

I give it a ****