Review: Who We Truly Are by Victoria Sue

Title: Who We Truly Are

Series: Enhanced: Book Two

Author: Victoria Sue

Length: 206 Pages

Category: Sci-Fi, Paranormal

At a Glance: Who We Truly Are had some good moments and did the job it had to, which is to keep the reader engaged and questioning long enough to hanker after a third installment.

Reviewed By: Sammy

Blurb: Talon’s deadly abilities are spiraling out of control. Desperate to keep Finn safe, Talon struggles to protect the man he loves with all his heart, and not become the greatest risk to Finn’s life.

Finn has no choice but to offer himself as bait for the evil forces kidnapping enhanced children, facing danger he is untrained and unprepared for, and he is having to do it alone.

Does Talon have one last fight in him? Will he slay everyone who wants to destroy Finn and the team, or will he finally discover that to defeat their enemy and the ultimate threat, the biggest battle he has to face is one with himself?

Review: In this review of Who We Truly Are there will be some references made to the events that took place in the first novel, Five Minutes Longer, from Victoria Sue’s Enhanced series. Please be aware if you have not read the first installment, this review may contain spoilers.

In this second book, we get a clearer view of how very conflicted Talon is over his growing attraction to Finn. After nearly having to kill the man in a previous capture and rescue operation, Talon is understandably reluctant to see Finn do anything but get the training he would have had if he’d gone into the FBI through normal channels. Coupled with the very real pressure of making this new enhanced/human special ops team work, and be accepted by a general public that had more than a healthy mistrust of enhanced humans, it’s easy to understand why Talon is pretty tightly wound when it comes to keeping Finn safe.

Finn, on the other hand, just wants to be a contributing member to the team, and that means when he’s asked to go undercover as an enhanced youth to try and discover who is kidnapping vulnerable, newly transformed kids with powers yet undeveloped and untested, he leaps at the chance despite Talon’s angry misgivings. While trying to get some sense of their relationship, and where it’s actually headed, is important to Finn, Talon is more of an avoid-and-dodge kind of guy when it comes to making any such commitment. It might have helped if, just a few weeks previous, Talon had not been forced to nearly kill Finn while both men were being held hostage, but that event really only gave vent to Talon’s worst fears—that he could never be a safe bet as a boyfriend. After all, when you are viewed as a killing machine, it’s hard to allow your romantic side show. But both men are determined to save enhanced kids from any further danger, and so the team rallies round and Finn goes under the tattoo artist’s hands to transform him into an enhanced human. Little does anyone realize that the forces behind the disappearances of newly enhanced kids has a direct conduit to the team. Someone is a traitor, and that reality may cost Finn his life for certain this time.

All in all, this second chapter in the Enhanced world was not as effective as the first. Perhaps it was because it lingered so often (and almost cloyingly) on the drama that surrounded Finn and Talon. After a few too many passages where the two men explored their feelings through a stream-of-consciousness, I was ready for somebody to actually verbally admit they were falling in love. I got it and I think most readers would get, too, that Talon was loath to admit his feelings since he was plagued with guilt over his abilities to basically kill with his thoughts; and I understood that Finn was young, insecure and so besotted with Talon that his fears about having his feelings possibly not being reciprocated kept him from admitting them out loud. But honestly, it just went on for far too long.

After a while, I found myself just drifting through these angsty passages to get to the far better elements in the evolving plot. I also felt there were a few plot points that never got resolved—for instance, just why did the woman at the shelter drug the kids to make them sleep, and did she ever get reprimanded for that? Also, could Finn really, truly pass as a teenager? The guy may have had a baby face, but he was twenty-four, for goodness sake, and I felt making him a seventeen-year-old was a bit of a stretch. Then there was the Drew and Talon thing—when did they become best buddies?

Yes, there were a few holes in this story, but the author did her best to keep them to a minimum. As second installments go, this story certainly kept my interest in this unique world and the characters that inhabit it. I was very relieved when Finn and Talon finally came to terms with where their relationship would be going, and I anticipate we are going to get Gael’s story in the next book in the series, which excites me. I have a soft spot for him and Vance, as well. Plus, the author dangled the idea of a mole within the group quite nicely, and I really want to see if we find out who exactly the culprit may be.

Who We Truly Are had some good moments and did the job it had to, which is to keep the reader engaged and questioning long enough to hanker after a third installment. I like this world author Victoria Sue has created, and will definitely look forward to the next chapter in this fascinating paranormal journey.

You can buy Who We Truly Are here:
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