I am a huge BDB fan, but Lover Mine just didn't live up to the rest of the series. In fact, I was so conflicted that I put it aside for a month after reading it before re-reading it in the hope of clarifying my thoughts.

The problem was that I love this series dearly and JR Ward has such a genuine talent for building emotional depth to the extent I love the people, I’m anxious that their lives will work out and I’ll become deeply engrossed in each book as I read it. This makes it often quite difficult to assess a book clearly. Never more has this been the case than with Lover Mine.

At heart this is the story of Xhex and John Matthew and their amazing journey to find each other. At the same time the tapestry of the plot has become so complex that we also have parallel stories of Blay and Qhuinn, Darius’s backstory, Payne and of course Lash. However it is John and Xhex who caught my heart, drew me in completely and whose story wrung me completely dry. If JR Ward had taken the stand she had in earlier books of just focusing on the one central story then this would be an unreservedly 5 star brilliant book.

But there are so many problems with Lover Mine.

The equal weight given to the multiple plotlines creates a lack of coherence and weakens the entire book. This is already a huge book but the many other plots meant that there wasn't time for JOhn and Xhex's story to be fully developed. There are still gaps in Xhex's story, we should havee had more of Thor and John and at the end John is still not a brother. But surely the strangest aspect is the inclusion of the ghostbuster TV crew at a B&B where we have a number of chapters of seemingly unrelated action before finding out that this might be a plot thread in a future book. Including this was such a poor decision as it did nothing but build confusion and break tension in the story.

There’s a very disturbing anti-woman element that has been growing over the past books but which explodes in this book. I love that Xhex is so tough and if she weren’t then there is no way she could survive the trauma that JR Ward throws at her. But she vehemently rejects any femininity – because the feminine equates weakness. Likewise her recovery from the most dreadful trauma, rapes and abuse was so rapid that it devalued the abuse.

In a similar vein the Chosen could be a strong and dynamic collective of women, but theirs’ is a sterile and entrophied existence requiring the presence of a male to reinvigorate it. In fact the Chosen, Layla, will achieve ultimate meaning in her life if only she can get a Brother to use her for sex, not only blood. It has been such a very long time since JR Ward allowed a strong, feminine character into this series. Beth come back – we miss you!

JR Ward did herself no favours setting up her nomenoclature at the start of the series because she is stuck with every name given a twist that has increasingly become a jhoke. However throughout the series she could have chosen to reduce the silliness of the language and the style of dialogue, especially between the brothers, but she has embraced the cheesiness and it seems to only grow in each book. Maybe it’s simply my tolerance decreasing but, yea verily, it is silly.

But despite all these issues, at numerous times throughout this book I wept openly at the raw anguish that poured off the page. When Xhex was hidden in the house while John is oblivious to her presence and then the scenes of her reactions to medical treatments are heartrending. The torment between Qhuinn and Blay is complex and painful. The sheer emotionalism that JR Ward draws so well is what keeps readers so addicted to this series.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood is a phenomenon. Its global following is immense and JR Ward could write a postcard and we’d read it. If she could reduce her plotlines and return to the model that worked in her first books then I think we’d all be much happier. But like it or not, this world has grown in complexity and inhabitants and JR Ward now has a lot of plots and characters to juggle.

I’ve read Lover Mine twice now. I am as much in love with the characters as ever. With tighter editing and plotting I’m hoping that my next foray into Caldwell will be as good as it has been in the past.