Keystone (Crossbreed, #1) by Dannika Dark

Series: Crossbreed

Release Date: January 15th, 2017

Rating: 2/5 stars

Reading the synopsis of Keystone made the book sound awesome! A kickass heroine who can fight and has these amazing powers (which you discover aren’t that amazing, except for her one unique gift; she’s slower than a vampire and weaker than a mage) that she has to hide from the paranormal community so her life isn’t in jeopardy.

However, once Keystone gets started you can see a woman who is alone, ignored, and eventually invited into the supernatural super-exclusive “Keystone”. Now for someone who has been homeless for many years, with no friends or family, being invited into this club seems like a saving grace to Raven but to me, it just seemed like yet another group of people that judged Raven and found her lacking.

Her “boss”, the leader of Keystone, Viktor, had rules that, even when broken out of necessity, still called for punishment or dismissal. What really annoyed me was that Raven has been looking out for herself–and only herself–for a long time. She’s created her own morals based on necessity and survival, yet members of Keystone constantly judge her for her actions and decisions, even though they would probably have to make the same ones if put in her position. It’s like the black knight has tried to get a seat at the round table; everyone’s judging and not recognizing the need for them to contextualize her actions! If one type of behaviour has kept her alive for all these years it’s going to take a lot more than a few weeks to trust people she doesn’t even know to have her back and learn how to fight and operate in their ways! I felt that the Keystone facility was just a huge let down in this regard, especially since it’s their job to recruit unique paranormals to fight against the ‘bad guys’. I remember someone even making a comment about how in a few years Raven could turn into the ‘bad guy’ which I found to be very patronizing. Who’s to say that she’d turn out that way? Especially since in the past she only ever killed out of necessity, i.e. people are trying to kill her or they are hurting other people.

Raven’s ‘kickass’ status kind of gets revoked when she constantly appears to screw up and get beaten up. Also, Raven’s big screw up was around 75% Christian’s fault–which he never owned up to, and Raven didn’t even try to justify her own actions (which I suspect is because she wanted to fit in so badly she didn’t realize that her self-worth actually matters). This incident occurred as a result of Christian and Raven being tasked to work with each other. They were ordered as partners because:

1. Christian, as the newest member, doesn’t yet have a partner and
2. Viktor of Keystone wanted to assess Raven’s ability to get the job done within the constraints of his rules.

However, she did break the rules (i.e. she was forced to kill the perp because her life was in danger–he was going to kill her). The only reason she had to kill the perp was that Christian decided to wait for a little before following her because he wanted her to make a mistake! Low and behold she did make a mistake but only to save her own life–he purposely put her life at risk because he didn’t want a partner and was pissed that he was attracted to her! There was no sense of comradery on the Keystone team, it seemed like most of the partners were grudgingly working together and were just there to live their lives in a semi-decent (moral) way. Raven was ignored, rebuked or in the case of Christian, humiliated, sabotaged, and was just a general dick towards. I don’t understand–at all–why people like Christian. He’s purposely rude and excluded Raven even knowing all she’s gone through–she was living on the streets before this! Despite all this, Raven was still a good person and saved Christian countless times and even when rejected (sorry, spoiler) by Keystone, she went out of her way (and risked her own life) to save Keystone!

Christian as Raven’s love interest pissed me off. Raven walked in on Christian having sex with an OW…so gross, especially since he was so crude about it: he actually asked her (while he was screwing the OW) “do you like to watch?” Then the next day Raven and Christian kissed. He also scared away a guy that was hitting on her even though he just had sex with some random woman! His defence was that the guy hadn’t even asked her about the bruises on her face but I doubt that was actually the reason for his intervention. He was such a dick (sorry for the colourful language) but he purposefully made her flash her fang (she is half-vampire) which scared the guy off. Now I’m not saying this guy at the bar should have been her new love interest but why is it that the hero always gets to have the one night stands after he’s met the heroine but the heroine doesn’t? It’s so sexist. Why is it the woman is always (seemingly) devote to her love interest when he seems to:

1. Not want anything to do with her,
2. Has ‘relations‘ with other women, and
3. WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH HER.

I also really grew to dislike Viktor. In the beginning, I thought he would be Raven’s mentor and help her grow into this awesome fighter and become like a father-figure I suppose. But it quickly grew evident that he wanted to do things his way even though they were old-fashioned, seemed to not get anything done and put more lives at risk. In fact, his rules (aka the reason he ‘expelled’ Raven from Keystone) are what held his team back. Objectively looking at the plot Raven got every single piece of actionable intelligence and he just threw her away because she ‘broke the rules’. Understandable from solely a(n) (archaic) leader’s perspective but his way wasn’t solving the mystery!

Also, the lack of teamwork on this supposed team kinda blew my mind. I get (kinda) how not every team is a Scooby-Doo gang so comradery is not everyone’s cup of tea. Trust is earned, ok got that, but Christian’s actions just boggle my mind! His jerk attitude and behaviour makes no sense for a so-called professional; I would’ve thought a guy like him–he’s an old and “powerful” vampire–would be cold and reserved to a person he didn’t like. He would understand he didn’t have to be friends with his partner to get the job done. But, nope! At every occurrence (and interaction with Raven) Christian’s emotions constantly got in the way of his objectivity. He honestly reminded me of that stereotypical/clichéd saying where the boy pulls the girl’s hair on the playground because he likes her (but Christian took that to a whole new level!). He never even takes into account that he was once the newbie on the team and his ‘teammates’ still apparently don’t trust him (Blue definitely doesn’t)… even though for some reason Viktor does? Yet, his teammates don’t sabotage him or try to get him kicked out. Christian is a hypocrite.

However, the most tragic thing about Keystone is that no matter the abuse (emotional primarily) that Raven received from Viktor and Christian she still so desperately wanted a place to ‘fit in’ and accept her. So at the end of Keystone what does she do but (basically beg to) get her place on team Keystone back! (I’m bashing my head on my desk at this point). So obviously the book pissed me off (yet I finished it which I think I deserve a pat on the back for). Raven deserves so much better; I only hope that Raven gets at the least a new love interest (which I know is highly unlikely) so maybe she can humiliate Viktor and his ‘my way is the only way’ attitude. Obviously, I’m not continuing the series but I feel that I should at least mention that my review is definitely an anomaly–it has an averaged Goodreads rating of 4.06 stars (wtf!!).

Preview Keystone on Amazon Kindle