One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Biting Love, Book 2
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


What can I say about Biting Nixie to properly convey the sense of fun and quirky freshness that's wrapped up so neatly into this delicious little package? Nixie Schmeling is a punk polka queen with her own band (Guns and Polka) and her own language (which I'd love to give an example of, but I'd fail miserably), and thanks in part to mother issues, the death of her sister, and the influence of a favored aunt, she eschews anything resembling normal. She's a bawdy, sassy, chirpy little thing. Julian Emerson, on the other hand, is a high-priced, high-powered, buttoned-up attorney who represents just about everything Nixie's ever dissed and dismissed in life.

When Nixie is maneuvered into overseeing the Meiers Corners festival to pay Julian's extremely expensive price tag to keep The Coterie from annexing Meiers Corners into Chicago, these two disparate individuals smack into each other with all the force of a napalm blast, and if Julian could just get the fiery Nixie to speak English (instead of, apparently, something more complex than sanskrit), they may realize that they're meant to be together. Regardless of the very fangy secret both the city...and Julian...have.

Biting Nixie isn't a takes-itself-seriously urban fantasy. This isn't even a takes-itself-seriously paranormal romance. You'd be hard pressed to find more than a page or two through the whole book that's in any way serious - despite some obviously dangerous themes and Nixie's own loss of her elder sister. But the book's just not supposed to be a serious endeavor. It's supposed to be funny, and fun, and raunchy, and fun, and fast-paced, and fun, and sexy, and fun. There's a lot of graphically described sexual encounters here, even though some of it's couched in dialogue that at best vaguely resembles English. If you prefer your romances to be more mass-market flavored, then Biting Nixie isn't something I'd recommend. But if you don't mind sticking your tongue firmly in your cheek and laughing your way through several hours of enjoyment and sizzle, and you're not that hung up on some plot issues that other novels in the genre don't have...like the fact that even the vampires in this series don't have a very firm grasp on what a vampire can do (like getting plastered by taking blood from drunks) or even how one is made (and that is a weak point, as the mythos has been skirted around twice now, in both this book and its predecessor, Bite My Fire: A Biting Love story)...then I'd say go for it. Biting Nixie's just a fast, light, sexy read with a truly unique female lead and a male lead that's sizzling hawt and sweet.

If I wanted to really pick the book apart, I could mention that Julian's size (he's huge everywhere) painted a nearly painful mental image when paired with the five nothing and size zero Nixie - but I didn't look too closely at that mental image so it didn't bother me. I could also be critical of the way that both books, while heavy on detail of the whacky characters filling the town of Meiers Corners, are downright anemic on the topic of vampire mythos. After two books, I don't have any sort of defined picture of the vampire species in general, and got almost no history of the two male leads in each book, Bo in Bite My Fire and Julian in Biting Nixie. But I don't feel like being critical, as I had too much fun with what the book does have to worry too much about what it doesn't. And as I'll continue the series (with the next story in the series, an in between novella, The Bite of Silence) not expecting anything beyond the same sort of light, fun, bawdy, sexual good times, I won't miss it. I'm not looking for serious or intense with this series. If you're not either, sit back and enjoy, because it's a fun ride.