Diablo Lake: Awakened

Diablo Lake, Book 3

By: Lauren Dane

Narrated by: Tatiana Sokolov

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

New York Times best-selling author Lauren Dane welcomes you back to Diablo Lake, Tennessee: a town founded by witches, governed by werewolves, and brimming full of secrets.

It’s autumn in Diablo Lake, and the town is buzzing with preparations for Halloween, Samhain, Collins Hill Days, and the wedding of the newly elected mayor and her wolf-shifter fiancé.

Ruby Thorne can’t think of a better time of year to come back for good and open the health clinic she’s been planning for the last six years. Her connection to the town and its veins of magic have snapped back into place, flooding her with a power eager to jump to her call.

She has a sense of rightness. This witch is exactly where she’s supposed to be. So it’s not much of a surprise that he comes back into her path just like he was meant to....

Damon Dooley has spent the last few years learning how to run the pack at his older brother’s right hand. There’s been upheaval. Outrage. Violence. Old rules have created a silence so crushing it’s collapsed the fabric of not just the wolf shifters but the town as a whole.

And yet, Ruby has returned. Man and wolf agree she needs to be in their life regularly, and before long, things move from serious to something magically deeper.

Bound to one another heart and soul, both committed to what’s best for Diablo Lake, Ruby backs Damon as he pushes for much-needed change. But when something falls into Ruby’s lap and she learns the whole, terrible truth, secrets need to be spilled. How - and by whom - becomes the only question.

Diablo Lake series:

• Book one: Diablo Lake: Moonstruck
• Book two: Diablo Lake: Protected
• Book three: Diablo Lake: Awakened

©2021 Lauren Dane (P)2021 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

A good story

You will enjoy this simple story of a couple's problems and solutions until the end.

The Truth Revealed

When Ruby returned to Diablo Lake she never expect to pick back up with Damon but these two still have a connection and not even the secrets of Diablo Lake can come between this witch and her werewolf in this wonderful read. Great performance by Tatiana Sokolov.

easy reading series

Final installment in this series that’s mostly romance with a fantasy twist. It can be read as a stand alone but it’s much better when read in sequence.
Pack enforcer Damon Dooley reconnects with witch healer Ruby Thorne when she returns home to Diablo Lake after years of training. They only have eyes for each other, along with the rest of their bodies and magics.
In this final installment we find out why Scarlett and Mary have worked so hard to stop the Rule of Silence law being rescinded.
Tatiana Sokolov does a decent job of narration but wierds me out how much she sounds like Tania Eby.

Finally the secret is out..

Ruby is back in town after a few years away to learn and grow in her craft. Damon took this time to become the man he is and be ready for her when she returns. Once Ruby came back, she and Damon picked up where they left off and with an eligible powerful witch available, no wonder every single wolf shifter wants her. Unfortunately, their fate has been sealed since the start.

After waiting so long for this installment and the revelation of the big “secret”, I have to say, it was a bit of a let down. I mean, the general consensus is that Scarlet and her sister are just big liars and others just bought into the lie. I can’t believe what the Dooley pack went through and a man lost his life for something so stupid. I never understood why Katie Faith marrying Jace put the Pembrey pack in such turmoil. If they didn’t stir up all of the animosity, the secret could have stayed buried for ever or at the very least, it wouldn’t have come up at this point.

Any way, Ruby and Damon made a cute couple. The entire book was really made up of their courtship and subsequent claiming. The secret to Josiah’s crimes isn’t discovered until the end, once everything was in place.

Again, I enjoyed the book, but it was a bit lackluster considering all of the shenanigans that precipitated up to this point.
Still it was good to have some closure to the story and possibly imagine the HEA.

Not as good as first two books!

I enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this third book is just a combination of book one and two.

Should have been....

I had high hopes for this book after the first two. They had fully developed stories and characters, good dialogue, and a plot. This book was nothing like the first two. There was no story. This would have made a great novella or a side plot to a main story.

The Power of a Good Narrator

I'm a Lauren Dane fan and have read a few of her books. My favorite to date is Broken Open so I decided to give this story a chance. I wanted to love Ruby & Damon but the narrator killed that chance. A good narrator can make or break a good story and Tatiana Sokolov did not bring the story any justice.

Bored to tears

What was the point of this book about a whole lot of nothing. Even the dogs were boring. The other two books were better. The narrator was fine. It was the romance story that was boring and flat.