Reflections

By: Briana Morgan

Narrated by: Kamala Alcantara

In the small, rural town of Aldale, West Virginia, Ramachandra “Rama” Ganeshan wants nothing more than to avoid dressing rooms for the rest of her life. After a brutal assault destroys her confidence and self-esteem, she yearns to be someone else, someone pretty, popular, and loved, until multiple girls in town are found murdered.

After stumbling across her beautiful classmate’s body and a terrifyingly familiar face in the murderer, Rama encounters a group of shapeshifters who know more of the killings than they let on. Only by earning the shapeshifters’ trust and becoming one of them will Rama be able to help serve justice.

But first, she must learn to love herself and confront her painful past and find the courage to investigate the violence.

©2017 Briana Morgan (P)2018 Briana Morgan

The perfect blend of mystery and fantasy and heart

There’s nothing I love more than a story with a strong female character who learns to be her own hero and Briana Morgan majorly delivers that in her beautiful novel Reflections.

Ramachandra “Rama” Ganeshan just wants to be anyone but herself. After being sexually assaulted in her family’s restaurant, any self confidence she once had is absolutely gone. She doesn’t want to think about it, she doesn’t want to deal with it, and she absolutely doesn’t want to look at herself in the mirror. Meanwhile in her small West Virginia town, there’s other just as sinister events happening- teenage girls are being murdered and no one can figure out who’s behind it. When Rama stumbles across the dead body of a classmate in the woods and recognizes the face of the murderer, she knows she has to do something, even if it means leaving behind everything she knows and joining a mysterious group of shapeshifters she’s certain know more about the killings than they let on. Joining the tribe of shapeshifting strangers gives Rama the chance to escape herself and, if she can gain their trust, perhaps find some answers as to what is really happening in the small town of Aldale.

Morgan perfectly crafted a tale with just the right amount of mystery and fantasy and heart, filled with incredibly realistic characters. They feel like real people who sometimes make rash decisions and regularly deal with the idea that not every choice fits into the category of strictly “right or wrong”, which left me guessing until the reveal as to who exactly could be trusted. But the best part of all the character development is absolutely Rama. I just adored her from the very beginning. She starts off vulnerable and has dealt with so much and to see her find a sense of purpose and slowly regain her own self-worth in her fight for justice was inspiring. I particularly loved that Morgan made her main character different than most YA heroines I’m used to seeing. Rama is Indian and not stick thin and a victim of sexual assault, all things that I think are woefully under represented in both the YA and urban fantasy/paranormal genres. And I truly appreciated that Morgan did an excellent and respectful job including sexual assault in her novel. It isn’t graphic or explicit and it also isn’t simply a plot device used to endear Rama to the reader. It is a part of Rama’s history and gives depth and a greater understanding to why Rama feels the way she does.

The story itself is also fantastic. I was on the edge of my seat at times, making excuses to listen to just a few more minutes of the audiobook because I needed to know what happened next. Morgan knows how to world build, I loved how she crafted the supernatural elements that Rama finds herself in the middle of. There was the perfect amount of “how” and “why” the shapeshifting works, mostly told through Rama learning the skill, that it was easy to get sucked into the magic of it all, but not so much that you feel burdened by trying to wrap your brain around all the details.

All in all, Reflections, was a great read with a poignant message about learning to love yourself again after a tragedy and I highly recommend it. I also strongly recommend it as an audiobook. Kamala Alcantara did an amazing job of bringing Morgan’s characters to life and giving a performance that truly made me feel every emotion Rama dealt with.

Disclosure: I know Briana Morgan personally and received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Baskerville Book Reviews

This is easily one of the most creative murder mysteries I’ve listened to. Adding in the shapeshifter tribe and their dynamic added a lot of interesting backstory to the book. There were a few glaring issues that annoyed the hell out of me the entire time.

The first was how little of the story takes place outside of the shapeshifter tribe. It just made it blatantly obvious one of them was behind it or knew something. I didn’t read the summary until after I read the book, but the summary is misleading as well. It implies the entire tribe knows something about the killings, which isn’t true. That’s one of the reasons I don’t read book summaries. They’re often full of spoilers or misleading.

The second thing that irritated the holy hell out of me was how the protagonist stumbles across a murder scene, notices a key detail, and then proceeds to NEVER bring it up. Long after it was relevant and pieces should have clicked together. I kept waiting for the interaction where she’d bring this detail up and I think it was mentioned maybe one other time in the story, in passing as internal dialogue.

The final big issue was how janky the dialogue was. There were times when I found it difficult to tell who was saying what or what they were saying at all. It started to make me wonder if the story was written by multiple people, one of them, not a native English speaker. Maybe if it had only been partially proofread and edited, or some other factor.

It’s a fun story, but you really have to look past a lot of jank to enjoy it. At one point, the leader of the tribe of shifters mentioned not wanting to name somebody as his predecessor. That’s not how that works! Ugh.

Much like the story itself the narrator was annoying at times as well. She kept mispronouncing mine as mind. She wasn’t even consistent about it, which made it even more annoying to me. She said mine and mind both in the same bit of dialogue which is distracting and annoying. The audiobook itself was full of instances of repeated dialogue clips.

NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.

Amazing Narrator for a Great Urban Fantasy Novel!

Reflections is a story about Rama overcoming her own self-confidence issues after dealing with a brutal sexual assault. Oh, and there is also a serial killer on the loose that is murdering teenage girls in Rama’s hometown. In order to solve the murders, Rama joins a shapeshifter tribe and finds more than just the answer she’s looking for.

The narrator for this audiobook is amazing! Kamala is great at making each character pop off the page with her different voices. Honestly, I could listen to her read me anything because she was that good, There are some minor audio edits missing from this book that needs more refining. For example, some lines are repeated in the recording, that should have been edited out. Also, at the beginning of the novel, there were multiple times when the chapter numbers and titles blending into the text because there wasn’t a beat separating it. Even though these editing errors are apparent, they don’t distract from the story too much.

I enjoyed the characters of the novel. All of them had very distinct voices and mannerisms that kept them from fading into the background. Rama’s character arc is inspiring as she overcomes her own self-confidence issues and determines to not let her rape define her. I thought Morgan did a great job handling the sensitive issue of sexual assault while keeping it realistic. Morgan is also a strong writer and I find myself loving her word choice no matter what novel I read by her.

On the negative side, I did think this novel moved a little slow in the middle. I found myself craving more action, or for Rama to finally make a decision about her life. Indecision is important for Rama’s character development, but it began to become tedious in the middle when the beginning and end of the novel progressed so smoothly. I also wanted more world-building around the shapeshifter clan about why they live in a mine, how they make money, etc. Not including some mundane details about the clan, really tests my suspension of disbelief.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys urban fantasy, or a good coming-of-age story. Morgan’s writing and characters make this worth a read, even with a slow middle. The narrator’s talent also makes this audiobook worth a listen even if you aren’t a fan of those genres. 4 out of 5 stars!

Disclosure: I received a free audiobook review copy from StoryOrigin in exchange for a honest review.

Lovely

This is a great story. It reminds us how self love is so important. Loved it.

Well written novel with a few mistakes

~~Warning~~, this novel does touch on triggering issues that some might not want to read. I didn't see a warning in the blurb so thought I would put that up here in my review.

Some words were missing, whether that was the books fault or the author overlook it, I couldn't be sure. The book is packed with a multitude of things that can be hard to discuss/read

Book follows Rama in her adventure to self discovery and things that happen within her life. She wanted to be a normal girl but one that was well liked, though her past keeps haunting her.

I enjoyed listening to the novel, even with the few mistakes that is within it.

I received a free review copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving am honest review.

Wow

Wow...this was just incredible. The story was great, and any girl struggling with self image issues should definitely read this. I'm pretty sure that's most of us, lol. Great original story. The narrator repeated phrases in a few places, but otherwise was good. I received a free review copy of the audio version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Remarkable Narration & Capture of a woman's growth

I enjoyed listening to this new narrator's voice and her outstanding portrayal of the different characters! The story had me hooked from start to finish. I adored Rama's transformation not only as a shifter but from overcoming her traumatic past and not letting it define her. I wanted a little more about shifters and the rest of the tribe, and a little more magic and shifting I guess, but overall I look forward to hearing many more audiobooks from the narrator and recommend everyone to listen to Reflections!

Intense, emotional, and gripping

Intense, emotional, and gripping from beginning to end. Despite knowing the difficult topic it covered (sexual assault/rape), I was not expecting to be as moved as I was reading this book. It was both heartbreaking and hopeful.