Reviewer: Tracy
Pieces (Patchworks #1) by T. Aleo
Series: Patchworks #1
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: June 27th 2016
Genres: New Adult, Paranormal Romance
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In New York City, an underground society of supernatural beings exists, hidden among everyday humans. They don’t know of our activities or any of our secrets.

The districts of the Works are made up of vampires, wolves, shifters, witches, and I’m in the fifth and arguably most important district, the Patchwork. My father is the leader of our group, and he oversees all of the other factions.

As his only daughter, that makes me the princess of it all. Cool, right? Actually…no.
Sure, I live in a mansion and money isn’t an object, but that doesn’t matter because I can’t leave. I have a guard who follows me around 24/7. My father and three older brothers treat me like I’m a fragile piece of glass, never allowed to take an independent step or make any decisions on my own.
It’s beyond frustrating—especially since my father essentially runs my life.
He says what I do, when I do it, how I do it, and all that jazz. He tests his formulas and new techniques on me. I’m a walking science experiment.
I hate it.
I hate my life here.

But then he comes along: Killian.
He’s just some vampire…or so I thought.

But you’ll have to read my story to find out what I mean. To know my secrets.
Until then, though, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rebekah von Stein.
And I’m a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein.

Welcome to the Works.

So…Rebekah is the great-great-granddaughter of Dr. Frankenstein.  One of his descendants eventually died of the plague and that descendant’s child decided to come up with a potion for immortality. Eventually they named the group the Patchwork and Rebekah’s father runs the Works which are boroughs of different supernatural beings.  There is the Patchwork and then there are shifters (that shapeshift into other human beings), wolves (werewolves to be specific), vampires and witches.  There are very strict rules in the Works and not everyone is happy with those rules.  One major rule is no inter-mingling between species.  If there is intermingling and a child is produced Rebekah’s father, William von Stein, kills it.  Nice, huh?

Back to the Patchwork.  When William von Stein first decided to make this race of superior people he gathered different people from all over.  Now you have to be born into the Patchwork.  When you are 16 years old you receive the immortality potion and it’s all sunshine and roses after that.  Of course body parts start to fail after a while so the people of the Patchwork are pieced together to make them the best they can be.  Rebekah is the only girl in her family and the youngest to boot.  When she turned 16 she had the immortality ceremony but alas, she is immune to the potion and is still mortal.  The von Stein family doesn’t want anyone to know this so everyone outside of the family thinks she’s immortal.  She’s been pieced together by her father to try and make her the strongest she can be because you know, humans are weak.  She’s now nineteen years old and has different eyes than what she was born with, an extra heart, an extra lung, extra muscles, legs of a man to make her stronger and a pieced together face.  (I understood the why of it all except the eyes – why different eyes??) She’s also basically a prisoner in her own home.  She knows it’s for her own good but her father and three brothers pamper her because of her mortality.   She spars with her brothers, Oceanus, Jonas and Cyrus and works at the family bar that’s attached to their house.  Other than that she has no life.

Rebekah finds out that the von Stein’s arch enemies – a shifter family called the Kelley’s – are threatening to kidnap her and hold her hostage.  They want the patriarch of the family, who is dying, to receive the immortality potion but Rebekah’s father refuses to let Shifters receive the potion.  The Kelley children start hanging around at the bar and the von Steins are suspicious of their reasons.

Rebekah’s bored out of her skull when a vampire, Killian, walks in and she’s told he’s the new hire.  She’s intrigued and they immediately hit it off.  Her bodyguard warns her off of him but she can’t seem to keep herself away.  When Killian suddenly disappears and the Kelley’s start asking about him the von Stein’s freak out.  When Rebekah finds Killian in the dungeon she’s shocked but not as shocked as she is when she finds out his true identity.

I actually really liked this story.  It was very different from anything that I’ve read recently and it intrigued me enough to keep turning pages.  I think Aleo has an interesting new series on her hands.  It has the shifters and werewolves that I like in my PNR but it adds something of its own uniqueness to the genre.

I liked Killian a lot (and the other guy he was – I can’t explain without giving out major spoilers!!).  He was a fun-loving guy but also seriously in love with Rebekah.  I adored his devotion to her and wanted nothing more than for the two of them to be together.  They had a rocky road to travel, that’s for sure.

With Rebekah it took me a lot longer to like her.  I understood her frustrations with being cooped up and told what to do and when to do it but quite frankly her whining just about drove me bat-shit crazy. I kept having to tell myself she was still a teenager and that’s what they do!  (I have a daughter who is 18 ½ so I have first-hand experience.)  Once I got over the whining and she started to mature some as the book went on I ended up being on her side.  Her life wasn’t going to be easy but I’m happy that she made the life decision that she eventually made.

The brothers in this story were awesome and just what I think brothers should be.  They loved their sister to death and wanted to protect her.  They weren’t afraid to show their love either and I adored that about them.  They were having their own love issues and that added another layer of interest to the book.

The father, William von Stein, I wanted to stab – repeatedly.  That man made me so freaking mad!  He was dictatorial and didn’t take into consideration his daughters wants at all.  He frustrated the hell out of me and I can only hope he plays minor rolls in subsequent books.

Overall it was a good book.  A new spin on PNR that I loved and I can’t wait to read more stories set in this world.

Rating: 4 out of 5