Royals (Shifter Royalty Trilogy)

This was such a good read, few spelling and grammatical errors, but great story line and character development , enjoyed the story and this reverse harem was very endearing; usually not my kind of thing. I bought this and read it in 3hrs that’s how good it was couldn’t put down. Looking forward to book 2!

I enjoyed reading this book and how everyone pov is entered into the book. I gave the book a 5 star rating because I didn't want it to end and I am waiting on the next book please provide a expected release date loved the cover

It was a good story, but the amount of grammatical and word errors is freaking ridiculous. I swear it's like this book was written on a phone and the author just let autocorrect pick the words. The amount of times to, too and two were mixed up alone was probably close to triple digits. Plural words don't require apostrophes unless they're possessive. Fill is in fact a word but the likelihood the author meant "It just fills right" is slim to none. I didn't see a single misspelled word, but deciphering what she meant from what she wrote was at some points like trying to read a foreign language. Do you remember when you were a new reader and you'd come across words that you didn't know and figured out the approximate definition be the words around them in the sentence? That is what reading this book is like. And you know what if people are being charged for your work then it's your responsibility as a writer to produce quality work. Would you accept a car with square wheels or flat tires? Would you go to a restaurant order steak and be okay with the waitress bringing chicken instead or worse bringing you rancid meat? No, you wouldn't, so explain to me why people should pay for a book with grammatical error and mixed up words that we taught our kids about in elementary school. Just an fyi too means also, two is a number. These are not in any way shape or form things that should need to be explained to a professional writer.

Here's the kicked on this, the part that makes the poor production of this work a real tragedy, she has a really good plot. It's interesting, once you decipher what she's trying to say it's a story that makes you want to continue turning pages. Story wise, the biggest issue is that some of the male characters aren't distinctive. The only one really distinctive is Grayson, so it could get a bit confusing on the other three about whose point of view I was in and I had to scroll back and check a few times. As they're different people their thought patterns, viewpoints and just the way they look at the world should be unique and distinctive, especially with this being written in rotating first person points of view. And if the author had invested in an editor or even found an experienced critique group this would have been corrected long before it had a price tag on the store.

Editors exist for a reason, big name publishers would not employ editors if they weren't a necessary part of the publishing process. They're ultimately businesses driven by the bottom line, even if they do produce stories we admire, because of this they aren't going to pay people they don't need. If you are going to self publish, you are taking on the responsibility of finding the people to do the jobs necessary to produce quality works and that's more than just a talented cover artist. I'd rather read a book with a crap cover and a good editor than the opposite and seriously I can't be the only person who feels that way.

While I'm curious to know what comes next in this series I'd really like to see Dalambakis put the effort into her work to produce clean copy and honestly I'm not sure I'm willing to purchase the next in the series if I'm going to be disappointed when she doesn't.

First few paragraphs of the book....

A handmaiden runs through the halls of a stone castle. Her blue dress billowing out around her. Coming to a stop in front of the queen’s quarters. A royal guard blocking her path.
“Please, this is urgent. I need to speak with queen. The prophetess has had a vision.”
The guard moves allowing the handmaiden through. She is met with the steely gaze of the queens four mates. Blocking her path to the queen. They relax slightly when they see it’s the queen’s royal handmaiden. The queen’s mates shift to the side.
“Bridgett is everything alright,” the queen inquiries.
“No, my queen. The prophetess has had a vision.”
“What is so urgent about this vision?”
“She has foreseen the demise of you and your mates. The shifter world tilting on its axis. The magic slowly fading away. The shifter race eventually dying out. There will be two great wars. The one to come and one many years from now. One to restore what is lost, should she succeed.” One of the queen’s mates, goes and barricades the door.
“Did the prophetess say who?”
“She did not see the hand from which you will die. Only that is it someone close to you. That many years from now a descendant will rise and claim her true pairing. She and her four mates will lead a war and restore balance once
more. She said you need to protect the future.”

There was a loud boom, rattling the walls of the castle. It has begun. The queen quickly moves to a room off to the right. In the middle of the room sat a white, wooden bassinet. Rushing over, she quickly reaches in and picks up the bundle, cradling the baby to her chest. Running back into the previous room, she meets the eyes of her mates. She knows what needs to be done.

I've read some of the other reviews which are positive and acknowledge there are a few errors but that the story is great. I'm hoping I can get further into this, but for now, I'm going to shelve this due to the grammar errors.

***A handmaiden runs through the halls of a stone castle. Her blue dress billowing out around her. Coming to a stop in front of the queen’s quarters. A royal guard blocking her path.** Her blue dress billowing out around her is not a sentence. Nor are the two which follow.**

“Bridgett is everything alright,” the queen inquiries.Inquiries???????? It is the first paragraph.......

I find the writing style....I'm not sure, it seems like the author had an idea, jotted it down, but then didn't connect the idea, or flesh it out. It is descriptive. There is a castle. There are people. There is a prophecy. The tenses seem to change too, a bassinet sat in the middle of the room, but the queen moves into the room.

I want to like this book. Maybe I will come back to it later. I am hoping that the author edits the book and re-releases it. But, for now, I am sad to report that I have put this on my DNF pile. :(

I was really excited to read this book because it had an interesting premise. However, I was really disappointed. The editing is just so badly done. There are many mistakes in grammar, syntax, and the use of "to" vs "too." There are words completely misspelled or just the wrong word was used. It made reading the story difficult and I couldn't get into it because I was constantly caught up on errors. The second issue is that the guys were a little difficult to distinguish. The perspective switches back and forth so quickly but because the individual personalities of the guys are not very well established, they all come off as the same person which is really boring. I hope that the author will take time to revamp this book, and take a good long hard look at the second book. She has a potentially good series but it needs some serious help.

First of all, holy grammatical errors. Theirs probably at least 50. I'm certainly not the grammar police, and I make mistakes too. But damn. It really interfered with getting into the story. I can usually overlook these mistakes pretty easily, but you really can't in this book. Missing words, the wrong use of "too, two, and to" MULTIPLE times, as If it was not accidental, and the author really didn't know the difference. Among many other mistakes ,sometimes when meaning "very" for example it would say "every". there was one time I read "to0"! used the wrong "to" AND had a zero instead of the letter o! I mean come on !
So this aside, I may have given a better rating, but the characters and plot were pretty awful as well.
Possible spoilers so be aware

The main character is pretty bland. No personality, nothing that makes her different, she is just blah. Monotone. Yes yes I feel terrible for her because she is physically abused by her father. But that still doesn't make me love her. There literally was no material to make us really connect with her. Barely any inner monologue to let us know how she thinks. Or even feels.

The guys are the same way. The author attempts to make them have different characteristics but most of the time, I couldn't differentiate between one guy to the next. Even though she has them labeled who's point of view you are reading from. Which honestly was annoying as well. It bounced around from pov to pov so much you got dizzy and it was hard to keep up. Back to the guys though, I didn't care for them. Typical dreamy shifters. Nothing special about them or their personalities. They all "sounded the same" nothing exciting or unique. And I think they where downright stupid sometimes. It took them way to long to draw conclusions or to think of a solution or to even identify the problem. Let alone act on it. I'm like come on do any of you have brains up there? I hated how they all interacted with each other, it felt way too fake. Even their behavior wasn't realistic to four teenage shifter boys who where the most powerful.

Moving on from characters, we come to the plot. Good Lord.
There was no climax. It was basically about a three month period where she meets the boys at school, her dad secretly whips her and abuses her, and she starts falling for the guys. But it's like super immature. It made me want to gag. The council finds out she may be the queen alpha shifter based on a necklace they found in her possession. Then it ends. Like literally there's no action besides the physical abuse. Which is sick.. No character building, no up and down, no mystery, just a complete waste of time. Very lack luster. it's also very repetitive to the point of frustration. this book could have been a thousand times better. She mentioned multiple times that most of the town were shifters. Yet we barely have any interactions with anyone besides the weak villain Kelsey who wants her guys. Literally don't know anyone else in this shifter heavy town. We are introduced to the idea of a council, and that 200 years ago there was an alpha queen, but literally that is all you find out about the subject. All of the guys parents apparently adore our main character, but there is only one scene where we even read about any interactions with their parents or guardians. And it is a brief, hard to believe, fake scene. (With lucians grandma) This author does not have the gift of story telling unfortunately. Good try but unoriginal idea, bad character development, terrible plot, and a ton of grammatical errors as if you just wrote it in a rush and didn't bother reading it yourself.... yeah no thanks. I hope this helps someone. Don't waste your time.
I feel terrible for putting down someone's work, but this was just that awful. I'm sorry there is no other way to put it.

First, props to the author for completing a manuscript through NaNoWriMo, good job. But get an editor, seriously. A college English major would be better than nothing. It's written like it was actually authored by a teenager. Very hard to read. The details are all in the wrong places. (Spoiler alert!) She gets hit, it hurts, she makes a phone call, yet we get a whole treatise on the selfies at the football game. I don't think the word "too" is used correctly even one time. Neither are commas. Omg, the commas. It's so distracting to have to mentally re-write as you read. I kept on bc the plot was intriguing, but practically nothing happens. I would consider reading more from this author but only something that's been thoroughly proofed. She has potential, but needs help to get there.

The romance is sweet without being stupidity simple. The male characters time in the story is well balanced, none of them being lost in the woodwork of the story, they each had distinct and likeable personalities. The plot is heart wrenching without being overly tragic, and puts a different spin on a pretty stereotypical plot, making it interesting and refreshing. The main female character struck a nice balance between being very strong mentally but not so strong physically that makes her seem like a strong character from the beginning while still leaving plenty of room for growth. I really enjoyed the book and I am greatly looking forward to reading the next one.

The concept is good, but the comma usage, mixing up "your" and "you're", "to" and "too" and other important minor edits detracted from this.

Maybe I stopped being able to read without critiquing, after grading essays, but I struggled to understand multiple sentences and paragraphs.

That having been said, I can't wait for book 2, because the storyline has me hooked.

I loved the storyline of this book and cannot wait for the next one to come out. Although there are grammar mistakes, the book is still easy to read. I feel like the author s new to writing so the mistakes are expected for the first book. I love how the characters act their age as seniors in high school. I have read books in the past where a high school group of characters act like they are really in their mid-20s. I like how the supernatural aspect was there but it wasn't too much. I like the subtlety of it and how even though the reader knows that the boys are shifters, they don't know all that much more than Callyn. I like the mysterious feeling of it and how you are dying to know more details throughout the book. I really like when books keep the reader from knowing too much so that the reader and the main character can discover new information together.

I enjoyed the authors story line, characters and uniquely different scenario. I highly recommend this Trilogy. I only gave it four stars because of the authors/proofreaders errors. The punctuation and sentence structure made for difficult and frustrating reading. I was constantly having to go back and re-read sentences to try and make sense of what I was reading. I am truly not trying to be a know it all or snob educated, but even if the Author makes tons of mistakes, a proofreader is paid to read and rectify said mistakes. From my perspective, it reflects negatively on the Author.

I enjoyed the book very much...the characters were likable. There was not a quick fix for Callyn's problems. Instead, she and her guys came together and arrived at a solve, after lots of stops, starts, heartache and hurt for Callyn. I do have to agree with everyone else that you need to find a beta reader squad to help with the grammer, etc. I was editing the whole story...all the way through. Just ask your readers if they want to receive a free copy to edit and review..you'll have quite a few volunteers.

This was a great first book, with clear characters and interesting beginning to end. Callyn is a likable character and it's refreshing to have a character that is so innocent but strong. The story was a bit too drawn out, as if the author was trying to reach a page number and did become slightly repetitive, especially with the boys, but I truly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the second book.

As many others have said the story gets marred by poor editing. Some examples--'Quite' instead of quiet, 'Simpler' instead of similar and 'Caddy' instead of catty. Honestly, these errors could be fixed by someone who is only decent at English grammar. The tense of the book also tends to skip around. Also, at first anyways, the boy characters don't seem to have a distinct voice and so it is hard to remember who is talking/thinking.

Updated: Changed my star rating to two stars, couldn't stand the phrase (used too much) kiss or hug the sh*t out of. Seriously, used 5 or six times in 20 pages. Dropped the book after about 60 percent. Trite although some promise with some major editing needed--word choice, tense, and a good deep editing scrub. The bones of the story are OK but the execution needs work

My mistake for not reading the reviews first...though, with an average 4 star rating, who knows? HOW this has an average 4 star rating is another unanswerable question. This was one of the worst books I've ever read. Couldn't even finish it. Spelling, grammar, dialogue, and character development were laughable. No question marks at the end of questions, incomplete sentences, stilted speech...stuff like that. Just no. Save yourself time and money.

For a first novel, this is fantastic. The story line is engaging and shows a lot of promise. I would love to see this budding author write more and make connections with a skilled editor. I get the sense that the author is a young person so I have high hopes that we will see more and that this originality will blossom with more experience, a finer tuned vocabulary, and more full bodied character development. Bravo!

For your first book this is unbelievable. I was captured by the end of the first chapter. This reverse harem book was a delight to read. I love how innocent the bos are even though they are shifters. The way they relate to each other with a common girl is refreshing. Looking forward to reading many more books feom you. Your the making of a great author. Don't dought yourself, you got it in the bag.

This story had potential but it ended up being super annoying. The characters are two dimensional and not believable. There is no actual development to strengthen the relationships and they do not act or respond like people would. If they were so worried about her not having a phone and she was in danger one of them could have given her theirs. Why don’t they call CPS? It’s just not believable. Having no other female characters was lame. People that are being abused don’t really act like that. Teenage boys don’t talk like that. Adults wouldn't respond by doing nothing if they find out on of their kids friends is being physically abused.

Despite finding a lot of typos (missing words or misspelled words), I really enjoyed this book. It's interesting to read from every point of view. There are a lot of things here, usually I'd say too much (shifters, high school drama, royalty, abuse, etc) but it's coming together nicely. Keep up the good work, and I can't wait to read the next in the series.

The writing needs work. The plot is good, the characters are good but the writing I had an issue with. It didnt flow like it should have. There were too many periods and it often made it sound repetative and halting when reading it. Using synonyms of words that are used often can help with that. Also, switch up the transition words a little bit. This issue made me feel a slight disconnect from the characters, which can be harmful to the success of the book. But, the core, the foundation, was there and I did enjoy reading the book.

I feel like this could be an amazing book. However, it is in need of some serious editing. The grammar is not bad, it's the flow of the story. Some of it is way to rushed and some of repeats. There isn't enough back story in the appropriate areas. I was on the fence about finishing it, but like I said the storyline is a good one. A for effort!

i liked the description and so decided to read this book it is as if a 13 year old wrote it i am by no mean a writer however she should have a much better job strongly Do Not recommended if i could give 0 stars i would

The point of view shifts constantly. It leaves nothing to the imagination. Imagination is the richest part of reading. This piece could be seen as cathartic for some. Also....proof reading, please, in the name of all that's holy. It has a lot of potential and I have high hopes for the author.

I wanted to like it. Seriously. The story idea sounded good so I tried the sample...but no, I couldn't even get through that. Overall, the grammar was horrifying!! It was a constant I...I...I repeat, nearly every sentence starting with the same repeated word/name, amongst other grade school writing level errors. Author... you had a good idea, but really you must get an editor next time. :(

Edit, edit, edit, and more edit. This has so much potential but I was annoyed the entire time. I felt it was choppy and also thought it didn't flow very well. I would read a sentence and then re write it in my head...ugh. Could have been great though because the story line itself wasn't bad.

This book was creatively written, it had me hooked. I finished it in one night. I just couldn't put it down. When is the next book in this trilogy available? Because I need it now! As an avid reader, it is hard for me to read a book that holds my interest all the way through. This book did just that.

The point of view shifts constantly. It leaves nothing to the imagination. Imagination is the richest part of reading. This piece could be seen as cathartic for some. Also....proof reading, please, in the name of all that's holy. It has a lot of potential and I have high hopes for the author.

I wanted to like it. Seriously. The story idea sounded good so I tried the sample...but no, I couldn't even get through that. Overall, the grammar was horrifying!! It was a constant I...I...I repeat, nearly every sentence starting with the same repeated word/name, amongst other grade school writing level errors. Author... you had a good idea, but really you must get an editor next time. :(

Edit, edit, edit, and more edit. This has so much potential but I was annoyed the entire time. I felt it was choppy and also thought it didn't flow very well. I would read a sentence and then re write it in my head...ugh. Could have been great though because the story line itself wasn't bad.

This book was creatively written, it had me hooked. I finished it in one night. I just couldn't put it down. When is the next book in this trilogy available? Because I need it now! As an avid reader, it is hard for me to read a book that holds my interest all the way through. This book did just that.