Review: Dash by Yolanda Sfetsos (Recast #4)

Dash (Recast #4)
Yolanda Sfetsos
Published: May 26, 2015 (Samhain)
Purchase: Amazon
Review source: copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

Reviewed by: Amanda

Rating (out of 5): 2 stars

Taylor’s on a hot streak. One of the few female gladiators to enter the arena, she keeps winning…and winning…and winning. After her latest bout, she’s trying to enjoy her reward when the arena starts crashing down around her. She manages to escape the destruction, but she can’t seem to shake the AI enforcer on her tail. And he’s always there. Just when she thinks she’s managed to lose him, he pops up again, and she’s starting to get annoyed.

Walsh has never met anyone like Taylor. Strong, smart, and undeniably sexy, tracking her down and keeping her safe is his job, and he’s starting to think he’d like to keep her for himself. When circumstances throw them together, sparks ignite—until Taylor realizes Walsh is not only keeping a secret, he’s keeping a secret about her.

For all its originality, Dash was a disappointment. I couldn’t connect with either character in any meaningful way, and the pace felt rushed, the story not as fully developed as I would have liked. Part of this may have been because it’s the fourth in the series. There’s enough detail woven in about the world that I never felt truly lost, but I did wonder if maybe I was missing something.

The world itself was fun and well-developed. There are AI and humans and other supernatural and alien creatures, different planets with different landscapes and complex technology. Taylor finds herself as the default parent to a cute little multi-hued frog with razor-sharp teeth, and I liked Squirt, as she called him.

Walsh is a Y-123. All Y-123s look the same, but over time they develop personalities and emotions of their own–they remind me of the humanoid Cylons of Battlestar Galactica. Taylor comes off as superhuman, with the ability to run for hours without tiring, healing quickly, needing minimal rest and nourishment. Their attraction is immediate and, at least on Walsh’s end, total and complete. Taylor takes a while longer to warm up to him, and I liked that about her. She didn’t immediately set aside her annoyance and mistrust over him being not human, so her developing feelings for him felt more genuine.

But their personalities and feelings lacked depth. I didn’t believe their connection or their feelings for one another. Y-123s are mostly used as sex toys, and that’s what Taylor sees Walsh as at first. There wasn’t enough reason given for me to understand what it was about Taylor that made Walsh want her as much as he did, and want her for something beyond pleasure. While I thought that Taylor’s change in how she viewed Walsh in the beginning was believable, it didn’t go far enough.

Dash could have benefited from more. More story and more time to explore the characters. If this is the end of the series, it’s kind of lackluster.

Sexual content: sex