Diablo Lake: Awakened

By: Lauren Dane

Narrated by: Tatiana Sokolov

New York Times bestselling 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

Book 1: Diablo Lake: Moonstruck
Book 2: Diablo Lake: Protected
Book 3: Diablo Lake: Awakened

A good story

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

A Touching Story With a Different Pace

The pace is different, slower, the unfolding is more cozy / warm fuzzy. Maybe changing narrator again might have helped listeners to more easily grasp the personality of this book, Ruby and Damon's story.

We still hear a lot about the previous couples which helps to link this book to the others but I did wish to hear more about Ruby, how her ancestry came about founding the town. Also, more about Damon as an enforcer for the Dooley pack.

That said I still love it all the way to 5🌟. I love that it's touching & interesting yet it very cleverly don't dramatize stereotypically dramatic stuff. This is part of what gives the story a warm fuzzy safe feeling while several serious topics pop up like for example bigotry and what does Damon being a werewolf enforcer implies for Ruby, a witch. I love that those topics don't monopolize the book at all.

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.

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.

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.