Madly (Bk 1) and Madly and Wolfhardt (Bk 2) by M. Leighton

Madly published June 2011
Madly & Wolfhardt published 22nd July 2011
M. Leighton
Source: Atomr blog tours

I'm reviewing both these books together as Madly is really only a novella, introducing us to the characters and the world they live in and preparing us for book 2. 

Madly James is a mermaid princess doing an internship at the school in Slumber, together with her friend Jersey and her bethrothed, Aidan, also merfolk. This is so they can spend some time with the humans they are bound to protect. 

After their resident advisor, Lady Sheelagh is found murdered, Jackson a sentinel, and Madly's previous crush, assigns himself to protect Madly, as the lore have escaped. They are holding Madly's sister Truly as leverage against her parents, Warden Major and Warden Queen, who rule the mermaid world beneath the sea. And apparently, the only ones who can save them are Madly and Jackson. 

Madly and Wolfhardt kicks off here with the discovery that the first lore to arrive in Slumber is Wolfhardt. He is the wolf from the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The lore are connected to the fairy tales, with the modern day fairy tales being a retelling of what really happened with the lore in the past. 

Madly and Jackson have to find out who the relative of Little Red Riding Hood is. They find her and Madly tells her of her heritage and the danger she's in. 

These books didn't impress me at all. The world building was really bad. I know nothing about Slumber or Atlas or why they have to do an internship and why they protect the humans of Slumber, and, from my perspective, only the humans of Slumber? Is Slumber separate from the rest of the world? And why do the relatives of the lore reside there? There's so much that we don't find out the reasoning behind.

The characters are completely one dimensional. Madly is betrothed to Aidan and will apparently start to have really strong feeling fro him soon, though again, the author doesn't go into any detail about this. Anyway, next you know, Aidan is falling for and connecting with someone else and Madly is still head over heels for Jackson???  And one really annoying thing, Madly's parents and sister are being held capture and yet all her inner dialogue is about Jackson. She gives very little thought or worry to her family!!

I felt this book ended prematurely too. Where this left off and the next book started really felt to me like it should have been a continuation of this book. 

Needless to say I won't be continuing on with the series. I've read some good reviews of these books so there's obviously people out there who took a lot more out of these books than I did.