One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Annabelle Lee, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 432 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle




Life in Donaldsonville, Louisiana may have settled down in the three weeks since Annabelle Lee discovered...so to speak...who had killed a child and left her body in the bayou, but that doesn't mean that Annabelle's life in any way resembles what it had been before the revelations, losses, and painful realizations bulldozed her body, heart, and mind during that investigation. Hey, at least she still has the booze. Thankfully, she still has the booze.

Her relationship with Cane is still in limbo and she's got psychic abilities she barely understands. A brand-spankin' new Harley is stuck in her kitchen, stocked with the shots that will keep her from turning into a bunny-smashing psychopath. She's knows secrets about the sort of people who would whistle a jaunty tune while executing her in horrible and bloody ways if she ever reveals them. Oh yeah, and she's being randomly stalked by a tall, dark, and sinfully gorgeous man who she never sees coming...because most of the time he's invisible. Toss in a visit from her ex-boyfriend Hitch, who has come back to town to get her help investigating the death of a friend, and Annabelle's plate is more than full, it's overflowing and spilling angst, confusion, and tension all over the place.

Helping Hitch is complicated. Being with Hitch is complicated. She still loves him. She doesn't want to, but she does. She also doesn't want him to die, and as she's the only Immune he knows in town, one of the rare five percent of the human population who is immune from the deadly bite of the mutated fairies in the bayou, helping him is something she feels compelled to do. She agrees to head back into the bayou and figure out the connection - if there is one - between smuggled goods, men who appear to have been kidnapped and tortured by government operatives, caves where mysterious goings on have been reported, and fairies who, despite all prior knowledge, can speak. Fairies who, despite her immunity, seem quite intent on killing her ugly.

And Annabelle is going to realize that the past three weeks, when so much of her life got tilted upside down and flipped around and around, were positively Utopian compared to what's coming next. That is, if she survives what's coming next.


I liked Stacey Jay's introduction to the flawed and damaged Annabelle Lee in her series debut, Dead on the Delta. It was exactly the sort of dark, deadly urban fantasy that gets my Happy Reader lights flashing. Annabelle herself was a bit more full of self-loathing and apathy than I found completely appealing for a heroine, and the book was a bit more heavy on the emotional angst than I prefer, but I loved the nearly post-apocalyptic world that Jay created and the plot was spot-on awesome.

Blood on the Bayou is better. In every way.

Still horribly and wonderfully flawed but much less apathetic and self-destructive, Annabelle Lee has matured in this installment. She was far more sympathetic to me as she struggles with a case that may end up ripping away from her everything she thought still true at the end of the last book. Life is definitely not full of fluffy puppies and dewy daffodils in Donaldsonville, and the Bayou is as deadly as it is beautiful, but Annabelle seems to attract the sort of horrific trauma that could keep a cadre of therapists in Jaguars and BMWs for a decade. Man, that makes for some deeply disturbing and fabulously entertaining reading!

I have to admit, I was Team Hitch in the first book. I've never quite warmed up to Cane, though he seems like a nice enough guy. That's the problem, actually. Annabelle was in such a wretchedly unhappy place in her life in the first book that frankly, I thought Cane was far too good for her and didn't deserve the drama that cloaks Annabelle like a death shroud. Hitch, on the other hand, has always been screwed up, though he hides it, and I felt for the pain of Annabelle's unresolved first love. Not to mention, after the shit Hitch pulled when they split up all those years ago, I felt he deserved the healthy helping of angst that would come from being with Annabelle. Twisted of me, but true.

Then I read this book and went from Team Hitch to Team Burn-Hitch-In-Effigy in six point two chapters (or less). I was thrilled that the one major unresolved issue between the two of them was finally addressed, though, and the scene in which it was dealt with was perfectly dripping with pathos. That being said, had I been Hitch's right hand fairy-repellent in this book, I would have shot him myself and washed my hands of him. Weak, desperate, wishy-washy, Hitch is an emotional quagmire that Annabelle doesn't deserve to suffer. I had moments where I actually hated him and would have heartily enjoyed his painful, screaming death.

As for Tucker...well...he's my favorite secondary character in this series so far. For more reasons than the potential horizontal action he could have with Annabelle, too. I love the mystery surrounding his past, his personality, and his motives and loyalties. I love his irreverent front and the depth of his awareness of Annabelle. The chemistry between them - not just sexual, but character-wise - is fantastic. And he steals every scene he's in. I want more and more and more of him.

There was a lot going on in this book. Jay certainly doesn't skimp on plot points and story layers. I found the fairy stuff and the ramifications of Annabelle's mysterious transformation more engaging and compelling than Hitch's investigation, but the threads were woven together with a cohesion that balanced out the personal/relationship threads and held my interest throughout.

There were a couple of weird things though. Maybe I missed something, but Hitch's FBI partner and significant other Stephanie - thankfully not actually present in this book, because I liked her in the previous book about as much as I like scooping cat poop - is referred to as Hitch's fiance in the last book and in the beginning of this one. Then later she's referred to as his wife by both Hitch and Annabelle. More than once. It wasn't clear to me if there was a reason for that. I was reading an ARC, though, so maybe that isn't in the final product.

Then there's the final chapter of the book. I can't understate how very much I disliked it, and it's the sole reason I'm giving this book four stars instead of five. After the pulse-pounding action, drama, danger, terror, and angst of all twenty-nine preceding chapters, chapters that forced me to bleed with Annabelle, mourn and cry and rage with her as she did, sweat and scream and fight beside her, I was suddenly and ruthlessly shoved six weeks into the future and had almost every major plot point and story element summed up or capped off in Annabelle's thoughts preceding an event that itself popped up out of nowhere considering where the lives of the involved parties were in the last spot they were mentioned.

I was more than a little gobsmacked by it all, to tell you the truth. Not only do I find that sort of summary resolution dénouement to be a horrible plot device that cheats readers out of the emotional triumphs and tragedies that would have evolved from several of those points being written out in real time, but in this case in particular, several of the items wrapped up in the fewest words possible didn't even make sense. One major plot point was glossed over as if it had no consequence at all. I felt like I was being force-fed a Happy for Now ending that diminished the excellent storytelling leading up to it.

Up to that point, this was a fantastic book on every level, one that delighted even as it tormented and traumatized. There's so many things I like about Annabelle. She's so wonderfully flawed and yet, in this book, she's trying in a way that I felt was missing in the first book. I'm dying to find out how the revelations and developments of in this one serve to enhance and evolve her character as her journey continues. Plus, more Tucker. I definitely need more Tucker. There just ain't no bad to be had there.

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Annabelle Lee, Book 1
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 389 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle




A bayou in the Mississippi River Delta isn't the place for a casual explorer. You don't just hike there. Not even with hip waders and industrial-strength bug repellent. There are things there that can hurt you. That can make you bleed. That see you as nothing more than prey on two legs. In fact, there are things there that will tear through a human body like tissue paper and leave it just as broken and tattered as a result.

Poisonous snakes.

Alligators.

Fairies.

Oh yeah, fairies are real. They're just not the sort you want to believe in. Surely not the sort Disney could make money on marketing. They're the piranhas of the Deep South. The Great Whites of the Delta. They are the top predators in the land, people.

And they're very, very hungry.

Living in the south has been complicated since the mutations turned the Fey into human blood-craving buzz saws, the people there sputtering and struggling to hold on in their iron-enclosed cities and towns. Almost everyone with money...who isn't dead yet...has fled to safer territory up north. Annabelle Lee isn't one of them. She makes good money doing as little as possible, working for Fairy Containment and Control in the small, stubborn, proud little town of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. It's not much of a career, certainly doesn't take much energy to do it. And that's exactly how Annabelle prefers it. Plus, she's uniquely qualified for every dirty task her job entails.

Annabelle Lee is one of only five percent of humanity who is immune to the bite of a Fairy. If one were stupid enough or desperate enough to try to bite her, she wouldn't be the one driven insane or killed instantly. Not like almost everyone else.

On the bright side, if you can call it that, the feral fairy population has taken a serious bite, pun intended, out of "normal" crime in D'ville. It's a relatively safe place, even for the brave tourists who can make it inside its protected walls. If someone can't, or doesn't, Annabelle helps out the police when needed, heading into the Bayou to keep the cops who aren't immune from risking their lives unnecessarily.

That's why she's out there that morning sweating in the August heat and humidity. There was a report that someone saw a body in the bayou. That report wasn't enough to prepare Annabelle for what she finds, though. It's just too damn...wrong...tragic...horrifying. Even in this dangerous, scary world, it's just too much.

A little girl. Dead. Her face already a feast for bugs and animals.

It doesn't make sense. Nothing about finding the tiny, broken body makes any sense. The six-year-old shouldn't be dead. And certainly not this kind of dead. See, fairies didn't kill the child. In fact, she doesn't have a fairy bite on her. That means a human did this...this...heinous thing.

And Annabelle Lee, slacker extraordinaire, over-the-borderline alcoholic, emotional wasteland, fairy feces collector...is going to have to help find out who did it.


In Dead on the Delta, Stacey Jay kicks off a new series with a debut about a coarse, unrefined heroine who could be the poster child for self destruction and her struggles to survive in an edgy, imaginative world with an almost post-apocalyptic feel. I'm a huge fan of dark, fantasy fiction (the fact it's set in the south is an added bonus) and flawed characters, and I'm glad I finally snatched this one off my TBR pile and dove in. It garnered the most excitement I've felt towards a new urban fantasy series in quite some time.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. As much as I like flawed heroines in particular, Annabelle's character falls a bit more towards the damaged end of the spectrum. And she seems to wallow in it, as if wrapping herself in low expectations, lack of ambition, and remembered misery will shield her from any and all of the truly scary stuff in the world. Like emotional maturity, pride, commitment, and caring. It was difficult - more than difficult - to feel very sympathetic towards her.

It wasn't so much the flagrant boozing, of which there is a lot, but the emotional retardation and the blatant self destruction that wore on me, especially in the first half of the book. Annabelle chooses being irresponsible, irreverent, and shiftless. So long as she can get a drink, take some drugs to sleep, and get a fair amount of sex, she's all good. This is a woman of no ambition and little self interest. Flawed doesn't begin to cover it. And frankly, until readers are given bits and pieces of her past, and we find out more about why she is the way she is, I found her fairly intolerable.

Even after the pieces start to fall into place, it was difficult to like her. If I'm completely honest, I probably would have put the book down if the surrounding story and the world building had not been so strong and gritty, so fascinatingly macabre.

There's a lot going on in the story. The investigation into the little girl's death, an FBI investigation of a huge drug ring (Breeze...made from dried fairy excrement - ICK!), the resultant relationship angst when Annabelle's first love comes to town sporting a shiny-clean FBI badge, and some mysterious and freaky - more freaky than killer fairies, imagine that - encounters with some bad people...who have the disturbing tendency to be invisible. Yup. A lot going on in the story.

And once those elements start to take more of a front-and-center in the narrative, I was able to forget how much I disliked the woman in the middle of it all. Eventually, I stopped disliking her entirely. I still wouldn't say we're bosom buddies at this point, but when the plot-driven story elements started to...well...drive the plot, there were far fewer I'm-a-loser-and-I-like-it vibes from Annabelle. Readers were finally given several solid glimpses of the things she does actually care about. Her friends, the town, they matter to the woman. And that makes her human.

And not for nothing, but Jay can write a hell of a tale. For all my issues with Annabelle, she was pretty damn believable, and the story surrounding her, as well as the many secondary characters, were extremely well-developed and utilized with aplomb. There's much angst, a boatload of regret and pain, more than a little guilt, and a hell of a good time all rolled up with some mind-bending story. It made for a mentally and emotionally raucous read.

By the end of the book, I was so caught up in everything that was going on, the last page actually came as a shock. It couldn't be over! I need answers to all those pesky questions left unanswered! But they're the good kind of unanswered questions. The ones that make for a gut-deep burn to read what happens next, a slow yearning for the next book release. They're the best kinds of questions to have at the end of a book, especially a series debut. It means Jay did it exactly right. I'm hooked on this series, and on Annabelle Lee. I want more.