Lover at Last...indeed! I felt like I would either love this book or really hate it. I loved it. Although, I do have a few thing that annoyed me, which I'll mention at the end of the review. I enjoyed the story so much that my annoyance was mild. Where a LOT of things going on in this book. Leave it to the Warden to show development with many characters at once, which was good and bad. As always, she's is laying the ground work for future books. I'll try to touch on every story line just a bit so that you get the full picture of how many stories were going on. I apologize in advance, because this is a long review. I tried to keep it short and sweet, but I found it impossible to do so.

I loved Blay and Quinn together, they were the main focus of the book, even with so many other things evolving at the same time.  Those books of focusing only on the couple are long gone. Their story was a tad predictable, but still enjoyable regardless. We, the fans, have been waiting on this story so long, I was hoping for a lot and J.R.Ward delivered.  We get to see them both deal with their stubbornness when it comes to revealing their feelings, their assumptions with each others statuses, and their insecurities. Throw in pregnant Layla and Blay's boyfriend Saxton into the mix just to make everything a bit more messy.  I also enjoyed that we got to see even more into Quinn's past which was useful in understanding why he acts the way he does now.   Not to mention, those bedroom scenes were not only very hot, but also very x-rated. Those scenes were done with finesse, but if you can't take reading about two men, just skip those parts.

I'm not really sure if I like the new guy, Assail.  He was mentioned in book 10 , Lover Reborn, as his home is where the assassination attempt on Wrath took place.   I feel like the Warden is trying to make him bad boy turning somewhat good, yet still bad.  He is a bad guy, period. He selling drugs with the Lessers, and it's clear he has no real moral compass. He's all about his money, end of story. It seemed odd and out of character for him to go for non-vampire Sola, but she is also bad girl of sorts herself.  I can tell their relationship will be dysfunctional  but aren't almost all the the BDB couplings?  What I anticipate happening with Assail and Sola sort of what reminds me of what happened to Revenge, aka the Reverend. We all know he's bad to the bone, but since he's aligned with he brotherhood and met his mate, he's sort of good now too, Even though Assail doesn't want to take sides, over time I can see him becoming a powerful ally to Wrath and the Brothers.  

Wrath's part of the story was cool. It was nice to him take charge again and make some significant changes.  I enjoyed that fact that he and Beth seemed be a larger part of the story again.  From the rumors I've heard book 12, The King, is to be about Wrath and Beth having a child.  The end of this book really pushes the story in that direction, so I'll buy the rumors. If book 12 is indeed focused on Wrath and Beth, I think it that completes the circle by going back to focus on the couple that the BDB series began with.

Trez and his brother Iam's story was interesting as well.  To find out that Trez is betrothed to the queen of their race and is trying to escape that responsibility by making himself the into most nasty man whore he possibly can is almost comical.  To top it off, I'm not sure I liked that Trez was falling all over a Chosen, but of course, I expect no less! Who knows, maybe Chosen Selena may change his ways.  Since Layla was able to go her own way separate from the Chosen, I'm sure Selena will too as some point,

In addition to these main story lines  we get to see every Brother and Payne at some point. They all have a purpose and come together for a special occasion or two, which I won't mention, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Now on to what I didn't like.  I didn't care for some of the abbreviations that J.R. Ward used. Seriously, after reading all the books in this series, you'd think I'd know what the hell she was talking about, but I didn't.  I marked several places where she'd used abbreviations that I had no clue about.  For example, "UK's", "BFD", "QT", "FFS"...what the hell?!? I couldn't even figure these out using the context of the sentence or the situation.

In addition to that, I almost felt like she used too much slang. Like the Brothers were trying too hard to be "rough".  Maybe it was more in this book than in the past books, or maybe it was because it's been a long while since I'd read the last BDB book.  Regardless, it took a minute get back into the grove of reading a lot of unfamiliar slang.

If you've already invested the time to read the first 10 books, you should definitely pick this one up.  I think you'll really enjoy it.  If you're new to J.R. Ward, I recommend starting at the beginning. This is not one of those series that you can just pick up at any point.