One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Darkness Within, Book 1
Rating: 5 Stars
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


If you are a fan of fangy romance, have an appreciation for thorough and layered world building and mythos creation, and have a special place in your heart for flawed/damaged characters, stop reading this review and start buying Eternal Seduction, because this one has it all. This book not only hit all my happy spots as a reader, it stroked them and made them wriggle with pleasure!

I loved it. I loved Logan, the heroine-addicted street waif with a jaded view of life and utterly disconnected with humanity. I loved her decidedly broken moral compass and her blase attitude coupled with a steely sense of responsibility for her actions and choices, however unsympathetic those may be. I loved that for as flawed and damaged a character as she was, she still had an intensity of personality that was as compelling to me as it was to Kerestyan. And I just flat-out adored Lord Kerestyan, the Ancient vampire who has spent at least the last several...several years in a sort of emotional ennui even as he rules the city of New York, watching out for the fledglings and keeping the Veil intact. When he stumbles onto Logan, a human aware of the existence of vampires, instead of killing her, he abducts her and gives her a choice. Live or die. The complexities of that simple-sounding choice have the power to change Logan and Kerestyan in ways they may not be able to comprehend.

With a totally unique vampire/werewolf/Paladin/Celestial mythos that I found to be astoundingly complete, original, and remarkably well defined (even for it being the Cliffs Notes version), a stubborn street waif that seemed fiercely determined to make her own way in the world regardless of cost or destination - and at times despite them, a sexy Ancient vampire that falls for said stubborn street waif with endearing alacrity, the ensuing romance that was enchantingly realistic given the character development of each of them, and a fascinating (and at times hilarious), well-developed stable of secondary and ancillary characters, Eternal Seduction has managed to reaffirm my rabid lust for dark vampire/paranormal romance. And the plot was very well paced with an enthralling mix of humor, tragedy, danger, and sheer grit. I have nothing even remotely critical about any aspect of Eternal Seduction.

I suppose I could complain that the second book, Eternal Hearts, isn't available yet. That's a major downer. On the bright side, according to Jennifer Turner's Twitter page, it's in a final proofreading phase (whatever that means). It sounds a heck of a lot better than "it's not even finished being written yet," so I won't complain...too much. Beyond that, absolutely a five star read for Eternal Seduction, and one of my favorite reads of 2010 to date.