One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: The Belladonna Agency, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Bantam Dell publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Ty Duncan is a Special Agent with the FBI...on paper, anyway...but since being tortured and turned into a vampire against his will six months ago, he - and a small group of specialized agents - work for the covert group called the Belladonna Agency. Belladonna has a specific purpose: stop Rogue vampires at any cost.

To that end, Ty has been sent to Seattle to recruit a new Belladonna member. Seven years ago, Ana Martin was known as Eliana Garcia, street-wise gang member and a favorite of the gang leader. Those gang ties are why Balladonna needs her. They need access to a place run by Ana's former gang leader, a place that may be a front for a Rogue blood slave market.

Now all Ty has to do is convince a very wary Ana to return to the life she's worked so hard to forget while fighting a desire for the feisty woman that stirs all his darkest yearnings - for her body, her blood, and most dangerous of all, her heart.


I had a lot of problems with this series debut by DePaul. The world building is pretty sparse, and what few details are provided stick to the broadest of broad strokes. I would have liked to have had a clearer idea of just how long the FBI have known about vampires (the book says "years" but not how many), how they found out about them, how long before they gave up on the born vampires and decided on trusting Rogues for their turning program (which, as far as I'm concerned, puts the FBI fully in the TSTL category, because really - there was no way that was going to end any way but badly), how many recruits have been turned, and what roles those turned recruits had in the FBI.

Not that having answers to any of those questions would have improved my opinion of the FBI's callous disregard for life or their general idiocy, but it may have given me a better handle on the world and the reason for Belladonna's existence.

Its supposed purpose is to quietly clean up the Rogue problem so the FBI could get back to making their turned vamps. That never struck me as the noblest mission statement, given the FBI's duplicitous and suspect actions, but maybe a clearer picture of their history with vampires and their beneficial utilization of turned recruits would have helped.

And not for nothing, but it seemed odd to me that neither the FBI nor anyone in Belladonna seemed to know all that much about vampires. Not even Ty, who was one. I'd think that at least knowing how to kill one would be one of the first things the FBI would want to learn about deadly creatures they're stockpiling.

There were too many problems and troubling elements with the world, the vampires, the FBI, and Belladonna in general for my comfort, but one point in particular stripped away my ability to willingly suspend disbelief. According to the mythos, the act of turning a vampire is fatal to the maker. At face value that's not a problem, but when I thought about Ty's brutal turning and certain other story elements, that detail created way more trouble than it was worth, making several plot points seem highly implausible.

But my problems with the book extended beyond those weighty issues. As characters, I thought Ty and Ana were the strongest part of the book. I liked them both as individuals. Ty's issues with his vampirism and Ana's ties to her sister gave them each depth and helped shape their definition. Unfortunately, I wasn't nearly as fond of them together as a couple.

Their initial chemistry was strong, and I liked the level of heat between them, but as their relationship progressed it started to sputter under conflicts that were inconsistent and hard to follow. Some of that was a reflection of the two characters who were, themselves, inconsistent at times. I had a hard time figuring out exactly what was bothering each of them with the relationship, or determining from one chapter to the next which one was martyring themselves for the greater good. And when I was able to follow the twists, I didn't like what I found. 

Ana, in particular, committed what I consider an ultimate sin for a romantic heroine. At one point she pushes Ty away in a completely unequivocal...and rather hurtful manner, completely repudiating any significance in their relationship, then gets all wounded and insecure when as a result, Ty pulls back and treats her strictly professionally. I hate that sort of hypocrisy.

Secondary and ancillary characters, like the other women recruited to Belladonna, had potential to add positives to the story, but they ended up getting little definition and had almost no impact on me one way or the other. They were just too underutilized. Though I do think the reason they were tapped for Belladonna, once revealed, was incredibly weak considering the importance of the jobs they have been recruited to do and the training that would be necessary to do it effectively without getting themselves killed.

Altogether, there were just too many things stacked against this book for me. Too many elements didn't appeal; too many questions left unanswered. Far too many things that just didn't make sense. As a series debut, it posed too many problems for me to feel any desire to follow the Belladonna Agency into the next book.

Genre: Paranormal Romantic Suspense
Series: Dr. Charlotte Stone, Book 2
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 336 Pages
Formats: Hardcover, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballantine Books publisher Random House Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





As far as bad boys go, you don't get much badder than Michael Garland, convicted serial killer and all-around badass. He's the worst sort of guy for someone like Dr. Charlie Stone. Rude, ridiculously self-interested, arrogant and totally alpha-male, Michael should be the antithesis of everything she wants in a man. He's certainly nothing she needs.

And that's beyond the fact that he's been dead for the past eleven days, so not exactly primo long-term relationship material.

None of that changes the fact that when the renowned psychiatrist and authority on serial killers sees Michael sprawled out on her couch four days after he saved her life then disappeared from it, the relief and happiness almost takes her to her knees. It's wrong, he's wrong, and his continued presence in her life is no good for either of them, but damn it if she isn't so very glad he's back.

You see, Dr. Charlie Stone studies serial killer psychopathy, but her real gift is her ability to see ghosts. Though...when it comes to Michael, it's still a toss-up as to whether that's a gift or a curse. She's conflicted on that one.

Before Charlie gets a chance to really work out her wildly fluctuating feelings about Michael's continued presence in her life, horror slams into her back door. Horror in the shape of a terrified and bloody young woman screaming for help and begging to be let inside before the man chasing her can catch her and kill her. And with the turn of a knob, against Michael's strenuous objections, she might add, Charlie becomes the focus of another serial killer.

The Gingerbread Man, so named for the notes he leaves in the wake of his sadistic, murderous games, has set his sights on Charlie, and this time, neither the ghost she wants, Michael, nor the man she wants to want, FBI Special Agent Tony Bartoli, may be able to save her.


When Robards introduced Michael Garland in series debut The Last Victim, it was love at first snark. I absolutely adored everything about him. Vibrant and flagrantly alive...despite being a dead guy...he stole every single scene, and the back-and-forth between him and Charlie was my favorite part of that book. I loved the tension and heat between them, and Charlie's struggle to cope with her growing feelings for a man she thinks is a serial killer was awesome. Oh yeah, and there was also a pretty good psychological thriller going on around all of that, too.

In this book, and despite a spectacular start filled with scorching sexual chemistry, gut-clenching emotion, and grim horror, the pieces weren't quite so shiny and wonderful for me.

I still love Michael. He's absolutely one of my favorite characters in an ongoing series right now. I totally dig everything about him, flaws and all. But this time, the heights of my adoration for him was matched, even exceeded, by my annoyance, aggravation, and frustration with Charlie.

Instead of comporting herself like the respected psychiatrist she is, Charlie's behavior towards and about Michael was immature and borderline ridiculous in several places in the book, and that's when she wasn't being stubbornly conflicted or obviously petulant. And her hypocrisy and inconsistency bothered me a lot.

She spends most of the time when he's around doing everything within her power to ignore him or treat him like crap, then panics and freaks out when he starts to flicker out of her reality. And the cycle repeats over and over again throughout the story, subsuming other important plot elements and squashing anything resembling relationship evolution.

Yes, Michael is often a pain in the ass and obviously delights in pushing Charlie's buttons, but the guy was convicted of crimes he said he didn't commit and sentenced to die for them, only to end up shanked by a fellow inmate. Now he's doomed to be either stuck as a ghost or slip into the bad place that wants to claim him. You think a little patience and empathy for the guy wouldn't be completely out of line.

But because Charlie is so disturbed by her growing feelings for the arrogant, all male, possessive, protective, sexy, totally yummy ghost, she's willfully and purposely dismissive of him and cavalier about how her actions affect him. It made it hard not to loathe her. And her whole "if you can't love the one you want, love the one you're with" philosophy when it came to pursuing Tony as a love interest - right in front of Michael - not only diminished the significance of her feelings for Michael but also wasn't fair to Tony, who is...if a bit dull for my tastes...a genuinely decent guy who deserves better than to be forced to serve as the metaphorical "screw you, Michael I can do who I want" in Charlie's little self-absorbed world.

Lest I forget, which would be pretty easy to do, actually, there's also a race to find a vicious and manipulative serial killer before he takes his next trio of victims. The Gingerbread Man is a sadistic psychopath, just the sort of villain I like most in my suspense reads. It would have been awesome if the plot threads into his identification and apprehension hadn't been totally overwhelmed by Michael and Charlie's seemingly never-ending battle of emotional immaturity.

I love the story potential in the arc of their romance. There's a real star-crossed lovers theme going on here that I enjoy, especially when partnered with the against-all-odds, anything-is-possible relationship potential offered by the paranormal romance subgenre. And to be honest, I even understand why Charlie is completely conflicted about her feelings for Michael. I just wish their relationship in this book had some measure of actual evolution throughout the narrative and that it had been better balanced with the suspense threads of the plot.

So long as Michael stays on this side of the hereafter, though, I absolutely plan on sticking around for what comes next. Love. Him.


The Dr. Charlotte Stone Series:

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Nikki and Michael, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 368 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Bantam Dell publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Private investigator and psychic Nikki James is on a case that's hitting a little close to home. She's tracking a troubled teen for her frantic father, a teen who reminds Nikki of herself at that age, when the girl enters an abandoned house with a serious lack of curbside...or any other sort of appeal.

Nikki can feel the evil that waits within the building, calling to her client's daughter, courting her. It's like nothing Nikki has ever felt before and it makes her want to run screaming in the other direction, but that's not an option Nikki is willing to take. First of all, the girl matters too much to her to leave her to her own bad choices, but there's also another tiny problem with running away; the dark presence Nikki has felt following her as surely as she has followed the teen.

What she finds when she follows after the girl and enters that hellish building, though, will rip apart Nikki's understanding of the world and the monsters in it and introduce her to a whole other level of nightmare.

Michael Kelly was sent to Lyndhurst to save Nikki from the very beast he's hunted for almost a hundred years. Saving her life, however, and using her as bait to catch the fiend, do not have to be mutually exclusive. If he was burdened by a conscience maybe that thought would bother him. If he hated the monster she has managed to stumble upon any less, or been any less intent on ending its blighted existence, maybe he'd let it.


My favorite, and in this case, most applicable, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's me when it comes to books by Keri Arthur. I get tantalized by a creative premise or intriguing-sounding characters or fascinating plot ideas and I get sucked into reading them, only to be brought up short by frustrating story elements and disappointing characters. By now I should know that there are just things about how and what Arthur writes that don't appeal to my personal reading tastes and I should leave them alone, but here I am again, drawn back in.

Insanity.

In my defense, I did mostly enjoy Arthur's Ripple Creek series opener, Beneath a Rising Moon, so it's not like I don't have experience with liking her work. Too often, though, I find the sort of things that were in this book: characters who act in ways that don't make sense given what's going on around them and a plot that treads water for too long while the characters slog through a quagmire of angsty emotional dreck that doesn't seem to fit who they are and where they are in their acquaintance. Some of the choices made and actions taken by the characters are just stupid, and some story threads get far more focus than they should while other significant elements go unresolved.

It's a familiar frustration made more untenable by my very hope that this time it would all come together for me. It didn't.

It started great, though. I can't deny that. Nikki's damaged but determined character drew me in and Michael was a dark, sexy enigma who appealed. The case Nikki is working on goes bad very quickly to kick off the plot, and she's drawn into a dark, dangerous reality she didn't know existed. It was a strong, captivating opening.

Then the trouble started. There was a decided lack of explanation for who Michael is, who he works for, and why he's there to save Nikki, but Nikki accepts his oddly random presence with far fewer questions than I would have expected given her inherent trust issues and her own psychic impressions of his character. Convenient for the story's body count, however, she doesn't accept things she should accept later in the story and her stubborn ignorance ends up killing a lot of people and threatening her own life. More than once.

Not that her mistakes ever really blow back on her conscience. She's too busy grinding herself up over the mess she made and the losses she suffered in her distant past...because damage suffered years ago is what's really important when people are dying around you in the here and now as a result of something you did...or didn't do.

Stuff like that drives me batshit.

Of course, if Michael had spent five seconds explaining himself and outlining his reasons, motivations, and plans instead of just pressing Nikki - a complete stranger, really - to blindly trust him over and over and over again, many of the problems in the book could have been avoided. I guess it wouldn't have been very much of a book in that case, but there are other ways to create plot conflict without having characters act with an abject lack of intelligence, maturity, and good sense. As it was, the constant trust tug-of-war between Nikki and Michael felt repetitive and tedious by the halfway point and downright aggravating by the end.

That, along with an egregiously self-involved Nikki during a very pivotal emotional scene, killed any potential for me to have a bunch of warm feelings for the foundation of their romantic relationship.

As for Michael, who's supposed to be an expert on all things Jasper, he had an intensely annoying habit of making assurances and assumptions based on his vast experience with the guy (which, honestly, only seemed vast in years spent hunting, not in actual combative situations). Problem was, he was always wrong. Didn't stop him from the annoying habit, though.

Jasper is too young to stay awake during the day...wrong. Jasper won't attack so close to dawn...wrong. Jasper's not strong enough to take me on...wrong. And it went on and on. It didn't exactly take me long to realize that all of Michael's "Jasper won't" moments were just previews of exactly what Jasper would do next.

I would have beat my head against a wall at that point, but I figured Nikki and Michael would take care of that for me while I was finishing their story so I didn't bother.

The irony (and really sad fact) is that for all the myriad problems I had with this book, I didn't hate it. I didn't like it, nor would I say it was an okay read for me, but I didn't hate it. I actually still really like the idea of these characters and this world, and despite myself - or maybe because of that whole insanity thing - I am curious about what happens next for Nikki and Michael. The book ended with a bit of a cliffhanger in that regard, and though I hate cliffhangers, I wasn't bothered by this one. It felt necessary.

Or maybe by that point I just needed a Nikki and Michael break.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 400 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballantine Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.






She fled to the end of the earth...

When she was a child, Shay Morgan survived the sort of brutality that leaves the deepest scars and the most terrorizing nightmares. To protect herself, she stays off the grid, living in Earth's End, Alaska. She has few true friends and the one man she loved dumped her because she could never open up to him, no matter how much she wanted to. Her life is a lie told to perpetual strangers, the truth too shattering to ever be revealed.

Two weeks after a serious car accident, Shay has finally recovered enough to start to getting back to her life, but a trip to a friend's bookstore brings her face to face with her ex-boyfriend Elliot Winter. On its own, their conversation has the power to leave her hurting and shaken, but it's what she sees on the bookshelf beside the man that rocks her to her core. A signed copy of the latest thriller by author Shane Neil.

The problem with that seemingly innocuous discovery is twofold. Shane Neil is a very carefully guarded secret of Shay's. The name is her nom de plume. But she sure as hell didn't sign any of her new books...for that bookstore or any other.

...it wasn't far enough.

The closer Shay looks into the mystery of who signed the books she authored, the more troubling her life becomes. Facebook, Twitter, and online outlets everywhere have been impacted by this impostor in a detailed and disturbing case of identity theft that threatens to expose Shay to the very man she's been hiding from her entire adult life even as it targets Elliot, the man she still loves. But when identity theft turns out to be the very least of the perpetrator's crimes, Shay may no longer have the luxury of worrying about her past. Her present has become deadly enough.


One of my favorite things about Shiloh Walker's books is her gift for creating truly damaged characters who have been through hell and are flawed and/or broken as a result, who are then, through the plot of the book, put through more hell before they get a chance at redemption or happiness. That gift is sometimes a double-edged sword, though, because occasionally her characters have gone through so much and are going through so much more that I can sometimes find the journey from Point A to Point HEA a little too dark and depressing, or the level of damage a character has is so severe that it makes it hard to relate to them and really embrace them in their full role.

That was the case for me in this book.

I struggled quite a lot with Shay as the main character. I loved the concept of the story, and could understand and sympathize with why she is where she is geographically as well as emotionally at the start of the book, but somewhere around the middle it started to really drag me down. I couldn't quite connect with the story or the romance because of just how much Shay was going through and how deeply damaged she was.

I liked Elliot, and I thought the story was scary for just how easy it was for the Big Bad to infiltrate Shay's life and completely take it over. She had worked so hard to hide that she managed to create the perfect opportunity to be victimized yet again. Given the proliferation of social media in our daily lives, it's eerily easy to imagine everything that the Big Bad was able to do. That's actually a little terrifying.

It didn't create a good foundation for the romance for me, though, and I need to be on board with both the romantic elements and the suspense elements for a romantic suspense novel to really work for me. I just think Shay needed some serious therapy and as good as Elliot was to her (eventually) and for her, I don't think he was enough to truly heal the sort of wounds Shay has.

None of that makes this a bad book. Walker writes extremely good suspense and very hot romance, and the combination of the two couldn't possibly be bad, as far as I'm concerned. It just wasn't quite something I could fully connect to and enjoy, either. Walker's Ash Trilogy worked much better for me in that regard.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: The World of Nightwalkers, Book 1
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 288 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballentine Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Docia Waverly's last thought as she went over the bridge and plummeted to her death at the hands of an unknown assailant was a fervent hope that her body would be carried downriver and out of her brother's police jurisdiction. She never doubted she was going to die. No one survives what the stranger in the SUV did to her.

Turns out, she was right...and wrong.

Docia wakes up in the hospital with no idea why she was targeted and no clue how she survived. And the second attempt on her life was no less a surprise. This time, though, a huge, stunningly gorgeous stranger steps in to save her. Definitely a much less painful way not to die. But then Docia's world takes an even more surreal turn. Hot Stranger Guy keeps referring to her as his queen - how weird is that? - and tells her that she's not Docia any longer...or, not just Docia.

The guy, and really, he's got to be completely off his nut, more's the pity, spouts off about being her guide and protector, then something about a transition period, whatever the hell that is. Frankly, Docia is a hairsbreadth away from freaking right the hell out. Especially when he and his doubly huge and far less pleasant friend kidnaps her.

Wait...is it kidnapping if she goes with them to protect her brother?

Ram, skilled warrior and right hand of the Bodywalker king, Menes, is tasked to protect Docia and the slowly transitioning queen of his people who now shares her body. The feelings she stirs in him, however, make him feel traitorous to his king, who loves his queen above all else.

With the war between the Politic he serves and Templars he loathes heating up, and all evidence pointing towards a growing crisis of nightmare proportions, one prophesied to unite...or destroy...all Nightwalker kind, Ram can never act on his startling emotions. To do so would violate his honor and his centuries-long fealty to his king. And risk the lives of the thousands who depend on him.


When I first started getting into paranormal romance, it was Jacquelyn Frank's Nightwalkers series, along with a handful of other now-classic PNR series, that really lit the fandom fire that has endured for so very many years. Still, it has been a long time since I've read a Frank book. I wasn't crazy about the Shadowdwellers series debut and I never got around to picking up the books she's written since, but I was excited to hear about this Nightwalkers series spin-off and had high hopes that I would be able to embrace another equally beloved series.

It wasn't the story that bothered me. Or the characters, either, really. I still love this world, and was especially tickled by the prologue that opens this book. It was like a short, fun visit with long-lost friends. I also thought Docia was a good heroine, feisty and loyal and strong, and Ram was as brooding, hot, and sexy as any of my favorites of Frank's leading men.

The myriad shifting points of view in the narrative and sheer number of characters who were featured in them didn't thrill me, but they weren't a deal breaker. I loved Docia's brother Jackson and thought his secondary storyline fraught with emotion and intensity. It was a nice complement to Docia's and Ram's plotline. Enough so that I didn't mind so much shifting focus from the main couple to his storyline, even though I do think it hampered the fluidity of the read a bit and prevented the main characters and their storyline from reaching their full potential.

Unfortunately, though, I had a huge problem with this book that no amount of deft writing, lovable characters, or imaginative storyline could overcome. I hate the concept of Bodywalkers as a race and detested the mythos surrounding them. Everything about them either freaks me out, makes me uncomfortable, or just isn't to my taste.

The idea of sharing a body with another person, willingly giving up your individuality, the very essence that makes you unique, to blend with another soul...one personality subsuming the other (yeah, that whole concept of "blending" didn't quite cut it for me), just gives me a major case of the wiggins. Absolutely everything about it disturbs me on a very visceral level.

I don't know why...and maybe I'm weird for feeling that way...but there it is.

Egyptian mythology and history isn't really my thing, either, but it's definitely a change from the plethora of Greek and Roman elements in the genre, so I couldn't complain too much about that, but I just could not reconcile myself with the concept of Bodywalkers and their...parasitic existence. To me, that just seems like giving up your core self to allow some random traveler to hitchhike in your body.

And on top of that, instead of having two people involved in a romantic relationship, you've got four separate personalities. I don't even like ménages à trois in my romance fiction. The whole thing was all a little too Sybil for me and pushed me way past my comfort level.

I so wish I didn't have to say this; I was completely looking forward to this series. I'm afraid, though, given what I read here, this spin-off isn't going to be for me. I know this book wasn't, despite the many good points it did have. Damn it.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Ash Trilogy, Book 3
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 400 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballantine Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





It was supposed to be over. She was supposed to have closure. In the six months since her cousin and best friend Joely Hollister had been viciously brutalized and slaughtered, and the monster responsible identified and killed, Nia Hollister was supposed to have been able to heal a little. Move on a little. Get over it...at least a little.

Supposed to matters not at all when you can't get the terrified, agonized screams of your last remaining family member out of your head, even if they are imaginary.

The thing is, the facts didn't quite add up, no matter how many the cops in Ash, Kentucky had shoveled at her. The timeline was...just a little off. Nothing too bad, nothing so out of whack that it couldn't have happened the way she was told it did. But definitely in a way that left Nia with a feeling of hopeless incompletion and unassuaged grief. Definitely in a way that compelled her to risk everything to find answers. To rip away the blinders and hunt for a killer she believed was not only still alive, but still hunting women.

That meant returning to the small town of Ash, Kentucky. It also, apparently, meant accepting the help of the one man she thought, at one time, was responsible for Joely's death. Because once Law Reilly sees her again, he makes it clear there is no way in hell he is going to let her stir up trouble for herself without watching her back.


It had to be big. After three long books, the only way for this trilogy to come to a successful conclusion for me was that it had to be big. Walker did not disappoint. At least, not in the suspense and psychological thriller aspects, because man, the killer in this trilogy is one sick, twisted, horrifying monster and readers get more than a glimpse into his blood-stained, murderous mind with several chilling and disturbing scenes from his point of view - including the dehumanizing rape and murder of some of his victims.

Not for the faint of heart, that.

The way Walker keeps readers guessing with a couple of well-placed red herrings and slick hidden-in-plain-sight twists and turns was especially well done, though, and one of my favorite aspects of this book and the trilogy as a whole. Well, it kept me guessing anyway, as my list of potential subjects kept spinning like a terrifying Rolodex since the start. And I like being kept guessing very much.

Again, Walker's gift for complex and damaged characters sets this book apart from others in the genre. Nia's pain over the loss of Joely, along with her control issues and stubbornness, gave her dimension and depth, even as it sometimes made her a little difficult to like. I have to admit, there were moments where I wanted to shake her for her frustrating behavior even as I was relating to her, knowing I wouldn't have done much different in her situation.

Nia wasn't the only one who occasionally gave me fits. Law, who was a calm, rational presence in the first book but stumbled a little in the second, seemed to go overboard on the caretaking for me in this one. And I had a hard enough time accepting these two as the romantic main characters to start with, because I still hadn't gotten over the way Nia showed up at Law's with a gun she intended to use, or Law's subsequent response to that incident, in the previous book (bros before hos, man, even if your bro is your female best friend).

Maybe because of that, their evolving relationship never really seemed truly organic to me, and it lacked a certain depth of emotion that could have elevated it beyond what ended up seeming a purely physical, lust-based physical attraction. Their relationship just never really clicked for me, the largest stumbling block - in fact, the only stumbling block - of this read.

For romantic suspense lovers, though, this is definitely a trilogy I'd highly recommend. True, not every single element in every single book was to my personal taste. A handful of the various antagonists' (the Big Bad and lesser antagonists in each book) actions and decisions didn't work for me. The main characters, while diverse and damaged and wonderfully complex, didn't always fit together as neatly as I would have liked. When it comes to the trilogy as a whole, though, any issues I had with individual books ended up being relatively minor. And for the record, I loved the first book (a rare five-star gem), liked the second (four stars), and because of the excellent conclusion to a very dark and disturbing suspense arc and an okay, if not spectacular romance, more than liked this one (four and a quarter stars).

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Ash Trilogy, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 372 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballentine publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Hope Carson doesn't think of herself as a survivor but she escaped an abusive husband and survived an attack by a monster. She's skittish and nervous and spends most of her time looking over her shoulder, but she's still alive. In the small town of Ash, Kentucky that's become more than half the battle.

District Attorney Remington Jennings doesn't want to believe Hope could be responsible for the vicious attack on her friend's life or the suicide attempt that almost took her own, but the call he makes to her ex-husband puts all sorts of doubts in his mind about the woman he's been inexplicably drawn to from the moment he first saw her. Maybe that indelible attraction is why every instinct Remy has rebels at the thought that Hope is mentally ill and dangerous - to herself or anyone else.

All he wants to do is protect her, to get her to trust him, to be close to her. He doesn't want to prosecute her. Unfortunately the evidence and the statement from her ex-husband seem to indicate that Hope Carson is a lot more than appearances - and his instincts - want to admit. Unless both the evidence and the ex-husband aren't what they seem.

But if that's the case, Hope is in a hell of a lot more danger than she could ever be to herself. And she's not the only one.


Another solid romantic suspense by Walker. I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't read the first book in the trilogy, though. Not so much because the story here doesn't work as a standalone but because of the backstory and character dynamic introduced in the first book. The emotional impact of the first chapter alone would be completely lost on someone just joining the trilogy here. And that first chapter was a doozy. I was sick inside while Remy spoke to Hope's ex. It set the tone for the rest of the narrative and I can only imagine how much of that would've been lost if I hadn't read the first book.

I love the blend of story and character that Walker's created for these books. Primary and secondary characters have depth and individuality, and I love that their interpersonal issues are messy and emotional and realistic. The interwoven plotlines of the characters' evolving relationships add cohesion to the story and work well within the small-town setting. Add in the story elements of a particularly nasty psychopath and a thriller that spans the series and all sorts of Happy Reader buttons are being pushed by this trilogy.

I did have a couple of issues with this installment that I didn't have in the first. Early in the book I started to get a little overwhelmed by the various shifting points of view and multiple threads of plot and and sub-plot. There is so much going on with so many different characters that the story waters got a little muddy and chaotic in places as the book progressed. It was never so bad that I was turned off the read, but it did trip me up a here and there.

The romance arc wasn't quite as appealing to me as the one in the first book, but that was more an issue of personal reading preference. I just wasn't as crazy about Remy and Hope, either as individual characters or as the lead romantic couple, as I was about Ezra and Lena in their book. Hope's damage and the emotional baggage she carries, as well as how she deals with both, is realistic and understandable, but it just isn't my cuppa for romantic heroines. Remy, too, crossed the narrow line between supportive and overprotective just a few too many times for my taste.

I still enjoyed the characters very much, and appreciated their romance, but neither it nor them really knocked it out of the park for me.

One of the things I did like about this one was the continuing serial killer arc. The glimpses we see from the killer's point of view take chilling and creepy to a whole other level, especially when it comes to his thoughts and actions concerning Hope. And I'm still absolutely clueless about who he is.

There were several developments in the arc of the psychological thriller that really worked for me, and though the main characters and their romance weren't quite as entertaining to me as the other book, I still heartily enjoyed this read. Fans of romantic suspense should start at the beginning, but they should definitely start this trilogy. I'm anxiously looking forward to seeing it reach a climax and resolution in the next book.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Crooked Creek Ranch, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 368 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Bantam Dell publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.



To say that NHL hockey star Luc Baker was loathe to return to his father's home would be a gross understatement, but when the bastard sends him and his sister a wedding announcement that includes a picture of the...bride-to-be, a tarted up twenty-something floozy named Tara Jean Sweet, he's left with little choice. If he doesn't put an end to this farce of a wedding, his sister and his nephew could lose everything. Again. Luc refuses to let that happen. And considering he's spent a career handling some real bruisers on the ice, dealing with one trashy chick with dollar signs where her heart should be will be a piece of cake.

Tara owes Lyle Baker in ways that she can't - and won't - explain, so doing this favor for him, playing a questionable part in getting his grown children back to the ranch before he dies, is the least she can do for the man she's come to care for. She wasn't expecting the reality of a furious Luc Baker getting in her face, though. Sexy, intense, and as cold as the ice he skates on, everything about the man puts her back up and makes her wish she'd never agreed to Lyle's Machiavellian scheme.

His presence threatens everything she's been working towards for years. Her existence is a risk to the two people he most cares about in the world. And the sparks that are ignited while they battle it out threaten to melt more than their determination and burn brighter than either are prepared to handle.


Never, ever judge a book by its cover. Trite, maybe, but in this case, extremely apropos. I was expecting this book to be a sexy bit of brain candy. I mean seriously, do you see the abs on that cover model? Yum. The reality of the read, though, was something else entirely.

Luc and Tara's story is a deep, intricate, emotional journey of two damaged and broken souls. Parts of their tale were ugly and gritty (so were some of the characters, for that matter), and the ride to their HEA was fraught with self-loathing and angst. It was all much more than I was expecting. More, really, than I wanted at the time, regardless of how well done it was.

There were some lighter moments, thankfully, that helped balance out the narrative. Both Tara and Luc were at times sardonic and witty, sometimes wacky and fun, and all of it necessary for lightening the more complex and tortured elements of their characters. I enjoyed them both, and enjoyed the depth and detail in their character definition.

What impressed me most, though, was how deftly O'Keefe managed and maintained the two faces of Lyle Baker, Luc's father. On one hand, he was a hard, brutal man who should have been shot for how he treated his children when they were young. Even as he's dying he's wily and manipulative, unforgiving and cruel. On the other hand, he was a savior to Tara, and took care of her in ways that went far beyond what anyone would expect. As a result, Tara's feelings for Lyle and Luc's feelings for him were about as diametrically opposed as could be - and the reasons for both were equally valid.

I loved that.

Luc's sister, on the other hand...

I loathed Victoria. I didn't actually think it was possible to have as little respect for a character as I did her. She spent most of the book coming off as helpless and weak in a way that pushed every single one of my buttons. At one point, when she was thinking about how she had no identity without a ring on her finger, and she liked a man because he could take care of her and her son, I would have cheerfully read that a house fell on her. Twice.

I get that her book is the second in the series, and imagine her journey to self actualization is going to be part of the arc of that story, but damn, I found her revolting in this one.

Unfortunately she was a significant enough secondary character with enough of her own page time that my feelings for her impacted my enjoyment of the overall read. That, along with the initial mistaken impression of the nature of the book, kept me from loving this read. I was expecting light, fluffy, and sexy. I was in the mood for that sort of brain candy. That I didn't get it threw me off, no matter how great a story this actually was.

Quotables:

"Have a drink, Eli." He checked the ice bucket, hoping for the best, only to be disappointed. "Is there no ice in Texas?"

"It's one in the afternoon, Luc."

"The ice only comes out at night?"

He was going to give this headache a name, try to befriend it, because as an enemy, it was kicking his ass.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: The Three Musketeers, Book 2
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 212 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Loveswept publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Dara Colbourne grew up chasing after her twin brother and his two best friends, always the fierce little firecracker, d'Artagnan to their Three Musketeers. But that was fifteen years ago, and she's no longer the fearless and feisty girl she once was. She's just lost too much, suffered too deeply because of high-risk jobs and thrill-seeking adrenaline junkies. Now she focuses all her passions on the job and calling she loves, working tirelessly to grant as many wishes as she can for sick and terminally ill children through the Dream A Little Dream Foundation.

As the foundation is funded entirely on private donations, Dara can't turn down the generous...if unfortunately specific...donation made by one of her brother's best friends. She doesn't have time to get Jarrett to change his mind about those specifics, either, even if she had access to him while he's on his honeymoon. That's why the bane of her childhood existence is in her office, spilling coffee all over her and generally sucking up all the air with his extreme hotness.

Zach Brogan, thrill seeker extraordinaire, owns and runs Great Escape, an outfitter that caters to the wildest and most dangerous challenges of man against nature - and against himself. If she had a choice, Dara wouldn't go anywhere near him or his outfitter business. Problem is, she doesn't have a choice. What she has is a deeply disturbing reaction to the one man she needs to avoid at all costs, and a fear that in granting the wishes of the children, she'll end up risking far more than she's willing to lose...again.


This second installment of Kauffman's The Three Musketeers series is a cute, sexy romance that's held up well in the years since its original release. Kauffman certainly creates interesting, diverse characters with highly individual personalities. It was a strength in the previous book and it's as significant a benefit here. Dara and Zach are original, solid, three-dimensional characters with great chemistry.

The plot of this classic romance doesn't pack much in the way of surprises, and it has a lighter, more traditional style and substance than its predecessor, but on the surface that's not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, it was a detriment to me, but only because I was so pleasantly surprised with the unique elements in the first book. Kauffman set the bar there and I don't think this one quite matched it, even though the conclusion to this story felt much less abrupt and campy than in its predecessor.

The emotional baggage Dara lugged around from the loss of her father and fiance, and the ramifications from those losses, were realistically portrayed. In fact, I preferred her character to Zach, who struck me as a bit too much of a Peter Pan for me to fully embrace as a romantic lead. Maybe that says more about my own issues with thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies, but I have to admit, I was more sympathetic of Dara's reasons for not getting involved with Zach than I was impressed with Zach's assertions that he was careful with the risk-to-danger ratio in his lifestyle and occupation.

It's not that I disliked Zach; I don't mean to give that impression. He had several sterling qualities, and I enjoyed him quite a lot during his more serious, intense moments. He was an absolute doll with the children from the wish foundation. He's just not the sort of character that translates well to the long-haul, Happily Ever After guy in my mind, but again, that's probably more about my issues than in any way a criticism of the story.

Regardless of those thoughts and impressions, I have to admit I was most tickled by Zach's nickname for Dara. It's silly, I know, and I'm not even sure why it had such appeal, but I grinned every time he called her Dart (short for d'Artagnan). I'd love to take the high road, say the appeal was in the exemplary way it helped define Dara's personality and backstory with an economy of words, as the nickname in general and the manner in which Zach used it in particular said a lot about who she was before her losses and it set a framework around her childhood relationship with Zach. Truth is, I just liked the sound of it. It was peppy.

Hey, I said it was silly.

Had I read this book first, I may have felt more favorably towards the reading experience, because without a doubt, Kauffman creates a cute, fun, touching, and sizzling romance that holds its own in the modern world. In light of the first book, though, this one was just slightly less entertaining and had fewer perks and unique gems to make it stand out. That one was memorable for those facets. This one probably won't stick with me for long, but still kept me mostly entertained while reading it.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: The Three Musketeers, Book 1
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 240 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Loveswept publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Two years wasn't long enough. It's been that long since the last time Rae Gannon saw her former boss Jarrett McCullough, since she returned home after being freed from the captives who had tortured and nearly broken her only to realize that the man who had hired her and groomed her into one of his top covert couriers had blacklisted her. He couldn't risk the chance that either she or the information she carried was compromised, so she was out.

It was worse than the torture and captivity combined.

For the two years since, Rae has struggled to put her life back together. She retreated from the world, settled into a private home deep in the mountains, and worked through her issues with her art - something she'd picked up during the long months of therapy. It worked for her...most of the time.

Stumbling over the bloody body of a seriously wounded and unconscious McCullough not even a stone's throw from her mountain sanctuary was not one of those times.

Saving the life of a man she hated bred enough resentment to fuel her art for years to come, but Rae had no intention of letting him die in her home. Patch him up, get him out. That was the plan. Problem is, a conscious but vulnerable McCullough is a far more dangerous beast than she'd ever dreamed. She hates her body's traitorous response to the sheer approachable masculinity of the man almost as much as she hates what he asks her to do.

Two years wasn't nearly long enough.


Another solid re-release of a Kauffman classic from Loveswept! I love finding previously released authors who have slipped under my radar, and Kauffman impressed me on a lot of different levels with this one. The characters' backstory was truly excellent and I love how deftly Kauffman fit their complex and emotional history into the tapestry of their story.

I loved Rae and Jarrett. Rae was a hard core survivor, and her reaction to having Jarrett in her home, being forced to nurse him back to health out of common decency, was maybe my favorite part of the book. I love how she faced him, called him on the roll he took in their past, and challenged him at every turn. She was fairly awesome. And even when she started to soften, when she started to feel attraction for him, the conflict of her emotions added a layer of depth to the story I appreciated.

Jarrett was a bit harder to warm up to for me, in large part because of a scene in the very beginning of the book. I started to appreciate him more and more as the story progressed. He was unflinching in his acknowledgement of the sins and omissions of his past, but shaken by the effect it had on Rae. It sparks a metamorphosis in him that felt very organic to his character, as if he's slowly waking up to the human element that had bled from his life as a byproduct of his commitment to his cause.

The enemies-to-lovers storyline here was powerful, and though it happens over a short span of time, usually one of my bugaboos, the history between them muted that issue enough that I was able to enjoy their romance. The secondary storyline, a thread of suspense that wends its way through the book, provided the impetus behind the majority of the characters' actions, but it lacked the sort of detail and description necessary to really sustain itself consistently.

My only serious issue with the book was, unfortunately, the end. Up until the climax and subsequent resolution, I was enjoying the read quite a lot, but then the characters' romance thread intersected with the suspense thread and things went a little wonky for me. Suddenly it was like Rae and Jarrett were on a relationship fast-forward, and their HEA took on a sort of forced, cheesy, chick flick tone that didn't appeal to me at all. Or make much sense. I just couldn't figure out why the rush to the end point in the book, given everything.

Though this Kauffman re-release was shorter than I'd expected, ending at the 82% mark on my Kindle, and I had some problems with the end of the story, this was still a fun read with a more complex emotional landscape than I was expecting. Rae and Jarrett were great characters, and Kauffman, new-to-me before I started this book, detailed their evolving relationship with aplomb.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Coming Home, Book 2
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 230 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Loveswept publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




It started with a kiss. Claire Montoya is a woman who fought her way out of a hardscrabble life and kept right on fighting through her enlistment and into a commission. She's a woman who follows only those rules she deems valid. Evan Loehr is a West Point grad, a by-the-book poster boy for the elite military man. He lives for and by all the rules, no questions, no evasions.

From the moment they kissed they knew, absolutely knew, how incendiary their attraction was. And how completely unsuited they were for each other.

Their professional relationship has grown more and more contentious as the years passed. Claire and Evan do not get along. Neither has forgotten that one moment of passion three years ago, but now that they're working together, they can't afford to dwell on it. It's a pity that knowing that and living it are two very different things.

Colorado in winter is Claire's version of hell, but dealing with Army bureaucracy while trying to train a company for Iraqi deployment is definitely one of the lower levels. Nothing about the Army's focus for this training session makes sense to Claire, and nothing she says or does sways Evan in the least. It's enough to drive her out of her mind. It's enough to scare her senseless, too, because poorly trained soldiers are dead soldiers.

If Claire takes matters into her own hands, she'll be forced to wage a personal war on the one man in all of Colorado who could keep her warm during the snowy nights, because for all his many, many...many faults, the fact is that Captain Evan Loehr is both a hell of a soldier and a hell of a man. She's left with no good options and a troubling bottom line: if she risks her career she could potentially save lives, but she'll definitely lose her heart.


I'm so confused. It's been a few months since I read series (and Scott's authorial) debut, Because of You, but I haven't forgotten that the expectations and assumptions I'd made about that book prior to reading it affected my impression of it. It was a much weightier, emotionally intense read than I was expecting, so I prepared myself for this one. Expected angst. Had tissues standing by. I was ready.

Yeah, well, Scott threw me again. This time, though, I feel a little lost. On the bright side, I liked the characters well enough, and I was much fonder of Evan than I was of Shane in the first book. There wasn't an overload of angsty emotional landmines in the characters' personal lives or relationship, either. Some might consider that a bad thing, but I was happy about it. The first book was just too heavy for me, especially as I was expecting a sexy, light read (the cover of that book did me no favors in that regard).

Problem is, for all that I liked the characters in this book, they weren't the characters I was expecting, nor was the storyline what I'd thought it was going to be. The first book left several plot threads dangling and posed a very grim glimpse into the lives of two secondary characters whose marriage was crumbling. At the conclusion of that book, I figured that was going to be a storyline that was carried over to serve as a cohesive element in the series.

I was wrong, because unless I'm mistaken or have forgotten something, there was not one single character crossover between book one and two and no story threads that were picked up and continued from there into this one. There was, however, an opening sequence that was startlingly similar to the beginning of the previous book, and not in a good way. Small details were changed, but the entire dynamic was far too similar and put this book on a shaky foundation for me from the start.

You will get no argument from me about the fact that Scott can write. She paints a cohesive, detailed picture of military life that is intriguing and disturbing at turns, and as often frustrating and perplexing as humbling and amazing. The psychology of career military personnel is captured perfectly as her stories unfold. The Army itself is portrayed as having a few...idiosyncrasies that are completely realistic and utterly believable. And more than a little scary.

I do wish there had been less emphasis placed on the scheduling snafu as the main conflict in this book. I absolutely believe it's an accurate representation of similar real-life situations, but it was belabored throughout the first half of the book to the point that character discussion and arguments over the issue became repetitive, and as a main plot conflict I felt it lacked complexity and depth.

The issue with Claire's best friend's alcoholism was also emphasized a little too much for me. Initially I was bothered because the character seemed a little too similar to a secondary character in the first book, but as his drinking problem became a larger issue, that became less of a point. It astounded me that so little was done to address what was a massive problem, especially for a soldier facing time in the sandbox. So many rules were broken to protect him that I couldn't fathom the "friendship" justification.

Not only was his character hugely unsympathetic to me through most of the book, but more troubling was my dissatisfaction with Claire's hypocritical reactions to his alcohol abuse. I would think that a man that messed up is no less deadly to himself and surrounding soldiers than one who is poorly trained. It didn't speak well of her character that she hadn't addressed that fact at any point.

As far as romantic arcs go, the one between Claire and Evan was handled well. It felt more like what I consider a traditional romance than the arc in the previous book. Sometimes Claire's prickly personality annoyed me, and sometimes Evan's frustratingly rigid stance made me want to kick his shin, but overall, their relationship was satisfying, sexy, and entertaining. It was probably the highlight of the read for me.

I don't know what to make of this series at this point. I'm disappointed that the threads left dangling in the first book weren't picked up, and because they weren't, I don't know that they ever will be. That cast a pall over both reads for me. If the series continues along with each book as disconnected as the first two, and the emotional tone of the series continues to vacillate so wildly with such unpredictability, then it won't matter how pleasant the main characters' romance is or how realistic the portrayal of military life, I will be disinclined to soldier along with it.

Genre: Historical Romance
Series: The Montgomerys and Armstrongs, Book 1
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 372 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle,
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Ballentine Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Their clans are vicious enemies but their king wanted an alliance between them, and what the king wants, the king gets...no matter who or what it costs them all.

Montgomery Laird Graeme Montgomery is furious that he's being forced to wed the daughter of the Armstrong Laird. For decades the two clans have warred with each other. His own father was slain in battle by his future bride's grandfather. To add insult to injury, he's heard Eveline Armstrong is...damaged. Mentally. Graeme will be unable to father children and risk his line being brought low by that sort of illness. For the clan Laird it is a bitter pill.

She has hidden herself so well for so long, too well, really, for her deceptions - though for good reason - have become her cage. Eveline knows she is loved by her family, but even they could not save her three years ago, and since her fall and subsequent illness, she has used the silence she endures to give the impression she's touched in the head. It's kept her safe, but it has a high price.

She's not damaged, nor is she stupid or ignorant, and she's definitely not mentally ill. What Eveline is, is deaf.

She knows that her father is unhappy about the king's decree, but once Eveline meets Graeme she can only see the opportunities. Maybe in another household, away from the threat that locked her into the lies she lives, she can be both a good wife and mother, be accepted for who she really is. All she has to do is convince Graeme that she's not what he thinks, and win over a clan raised to loathe her family with every fiber of their being.


This book represents everything I love about Scottish historical romance. Honorable Scot warriors, braw and mighty, and the strong, intelligent women who love them - and are loved by them. It just sets my heart to pitter-pattering, especially when the characters are as eminently lovable as Graeme and Eveline are in this book.

Readers for whom historical authenticity is paramount may not find this book as appealing as I, but I've never been one to quibble over those details. In fact, I often find the more historically accurate books to be a bit too realistic and depressing for it. This book had just enough of a medieval Scottish feel to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief but not so much that I was either annoyed, dismayed, or utterly horrified by what life was really like back then, especially for women.

And it had Graeme and Eveline. I loved them both. Graeme was the perfect alpha male, strong and commanding, but with some truly endearing moments of confusion, uncertainty, and vulnerability. I've always felt it's those less than perfect moments and how the characters respond to them that define my favorite alpha males and make them the most lovable. Graeme is right up there with my favorites.

As much as I loved him, though, it was Eveline who made this book such a rousing success for me. I always appreciate books with a hero or heroine who have to deal with a disability of some sort, and I loved the slant the story took with Eveline's deafness. Her character was completely sympathetic, but not once did she come off self-pitying or weak. The decisions she made in relation to her own clan were extreme, but understandable, and the efforts she made with Graeme and the Montgomerys were laudable. She was smart, resourceful, and independent. I just adored her.

I loved them both together, too, and the arc of their relationship evolution was full of just the sort of heart-touching romance...and sexy intimacies...that I love most in romance novels. That, along with Eveline's challenges in her new home, were the strongest elements of the story.

They were also the majority of the story, and that's the only reason this book didn't quite hit the full five stars for me. For all I loved what was there in the plot, I have to admit that it seemed a bit too straightforward and lacked the depth that could have made it meatier and more intense a read. What little external conflict there was struck me as a bit predictable and lacking in originality.

I liked it well enough, but I knew fairly early into the book just what the conflict climax was going to entail and how it would resolve. When I can see it coming that far in advance, it doesn't leave room for many pleasant surprises.

Obviously, that was only a minor complaint, because I heartily enjoyed this read. It's my first experience with Maya Banks in the mainstream, and I have to say, I'm thrilled by it. This was a wonderfully strong, emotionally satisfying, excellently cast way to kick off a new series and I can't wait to get another shot at the Montgomerys and the Armstrongs both.

Genre: Paranormal Romantic Suspense
Series: Ripple Creek Werewolves, Book 1
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 368 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Dell Books publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




When her twin sister is viciously attacked by the werewolf who has slaughtered three women on the Ripple Creek Reservation, Neva Grant vows to kill him. She can't just let the Rangers handle the investigation. She knows from her sister's files that they suspect a member of the Sinclair pack. She also knows that only the alpha's third son, bad boy Duncan Sinclair, has an alibi that elevates him above suspicion. For the murders, anyway.

Neither his past nor his reputation are in any way innocent on any other level.

Now all Neva has to do is seduce the gorgeous werewolf during the moon dance, get access to his home, figure out who almost killed her sister, and end his reign of terror. Piece of cake. Well...at least it's easier than controlling her emotions around the gorgeous Duncan. She's agreed to be his mate through this moon cycle. Rampaging killer on the loose or not, a week of mating with Duncan may be riskier to Neva's life than anything else she'll face.


This is a re-release of Keri Arthur's Ripple Creek series debut, originally published in 2003. I was a little hesitant when I started reading. I knew the werewolf mythos in this book was similar to that of Arthur's Riley Jenson Guardian series, and I wasn't crazy about certain aspects of that in the two RJG books I read. Thankfully, any contentious elements remained mostly in the background in this book.

I liked both Neva and Duncan as the main characters, but I do wish there had been more attention given to their character definition. The romance arc has a heavy sexual element, which was fine, but there was little in the way of significant character depth or romance evolution to balance it out. In fact, the majority of their relationship seemed based solely on lust and physical compatibility as opposed to any deeper emotions or mutual respect, and that doesn't really work for me.

The suspense and mystery story elements were solid, though. The Bad Guy was pretty easy to figure out early in the tale, but I liked that the plotline got richer and more complex, piling on deadly implications and threatening dangers as the story progressed. The scope, motivation, and intent of the murders as well as the intensity level of the investigation kept me invested throughout the book.

I do wish the book had begun at a slightly earlier point in the characters' lives. I would have really enjoyed seeing Duncan in his environment prior to his return, or reading about Neva dealing with her sister's attack as it happened instead of being told about it after the fact. Other than that, though, and beyond a few scenes that displayed some lapses in logic and some rather specious conclusions in the investigation, I liked the werewolf killer storyline a lot.

Equally enjoyable was seeing Neva's relationship with her parents alter in the latter half of the book, and I respected the hell out of Neva when she stood up to her father. It wasn't just what she said, but how she said it that I appreciated immensely. The philosophical differences between Duncan's pack and Neva's pack were fascinating and the subsequent fallout made for some emotionally intense scenes. I would have loved to see that have an even larger role in the story.

The second half of the book was stronger and more enjoyable to me than the first half. Duncan eased up just a little on the alpha male jackassery, Neva established herself more in their relationship, and some of the misunderstandings between them were cleared up. The scenes with them working together to track the Bad Guy were my favorites in the book. The read as a whole may have been a bit uneven for me, but it definitely ended on a positive note.

Genre: Thriller/Suspense
Series: Keye Street, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 320 Pages
Formats: Hardcover, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Bantam publisher Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Atlanta private investigator, bounty hunter, and occasional police consultant Keye Street is feeling a little tense. She has been ever since she and her homicide detective boyfriend Aaron Rauser survived a couple of murder attempts last year, but the punishing southern summer heat of Atlanta in July is making it worse.

And it's times like this that Keye's demons ride her hardest.

Four years after her alcohol addiction destroyed her criminal profiling career with the FBI, the last thing recovering alcoholic Keye needs is her damaged, flawed cousin Miki calling her up and begging Keye to meet her at a nearby bar. But that's what you do for family.

Miki is freaked out. She claims that someone broke into her home, but after the police showed up and didn't find anything, they took one look at her record and blew her off. Thing is, Keye isn't sure she believes her either. She's been down this road before with her self-destructive cousin.

Then Keye finds a body in her cousin's living room, and the victim may be connected to Rauser's latest homicide case. Even as she kicks herself for not taking Miki seriously, this new development puts even more on Keye's plate. Now there's a murderous stalker on top of a bail jumper with bodily fluid issues and an investigation into a crematorium that may not be keeping the home fires burning.

The heat and the fear and the exhaustion on top of all of that start to make a drink sound like just the thing Keye needs to get her through. And this time, her demons may be too strong for her to defeat.


Amanda Kyle Williams is back with another long, sultry look into the day-to-day life of the mostly functional all-purpose bastion of law and order, Keye Street.

I love Williams' style. This isn't just a suspense novel or a psychological thriller. It is peccadillo-embracing, loony-relative-having, deep-fried-donut-eating Southern fiction wrapped around more than one bizarre case of varying criminality and horror. It's the sort of fiction you don't just read, you commit to, because by the time you're done, the narrative has taken you on such a slow, sweaty, southern journey that the characters are anywhere from old friends to bitter rivals...or both.

Keye is so deliciously flawed as a character. She's got issues. Big, juicy, career-ending, daily-struggle issues. And it's not just the alcoholism, though that is a huge part. Her life is a cautionary tale and Williams pulls no punches, as if she crafts every scene to display Keye's strengths and weaknesses in as harshly bright a light as possible. I love it.

I also love the subtle touches of quirkiness and humor, mostly sarcastic, that lighten Keye's nature (and the story) when things are at their most tense or bleakest. I love Keye's intelligence and her dedication to those she considers her people, be they close friends or family. Her cousin Miki is a real piece of work, but Keye handles her. Not always with kid gloves, but then again, Miki keeps trying to goad Keye into taking a drink. Lovely woman.

Keye still feels compelled to do the right thing. Miki is family. Period. End of discussion. So southern.

Unfortunately, the verdant, rich southern style did slow the pace of the tale. The first half of the book felt a bit boggy and plodding after the pulse-pounding start. As big a fan as I am of Keye and all her quirks, there was a lot of character-driven material in the first half, and the meat of the external, plot-driven story elements didn't really gear up until about midway through.

Once they do, several significant story elements built towards a surprising and satisfying conclusion that was ripe with personal danger and future implications. It's a good plot arc, for sure, and all the plot-driven elements were wonderfully convoluted and complex.

I wish less time had been spent focusing on Keye's never-ending obsession with alcohol. It's something that bothered me in the first book, as well. Her being an alcoholic (recovering) is a defining element of her character, I know. I just get a little weary of reading about it over and over throughout the story. Especially in this book, where I felt a more subtle application could have lent more emotional impact to events during the final conflict of the book.

That said, this book has provided me another solidly entertaining read. I love Keye, and while spending time in her head can get a bit harrowing at times, I find myself rooting for her. Liking her. Wanting her to be happy with Rauser and content in her job. Sober. Even when she makes me totally mental, I want her to triumph. But maybe that's just the Southern in me. Whatever it is, I hope we see more of Keye Street soon.