One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: Task Force Eagle, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 188 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: A copy of this book was provided to me by the author for review. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





There is nothing Juliana Paris wouldn't do to protect her younger brother, even if it means withholding information from the sexiest man she's ever seen, DEA Agent Ricardo Cruz. Juliana doesn't trust cops and the DEA is just another type of cop agency as far as she's concerned. If her brother is in trouble, and it looks like he definitely is, Juliana will find him and she'll keep him safe. Keep him free. Fix whatever it is he's done wrong this time.

Except this time, Juliana discovers, there are worse things than sexy DEA agents looking to imprison her brother on drug trafficking charges. There is a vicious drug cartel who think she's got something that would incriminate them, and they're coming for her hard. With her brother on the run and Agent Rick Cruz breathing down her neck, Juliana may need to rethink a few of her trust issues. Her life - and the life of her brother - may depend on it.


This book started out okay for me. It didn't break any new ground in the genre, the story as a whole is a bit too generic and lacking in complexity and the suspense plotline is a bit too predictable, but both Juliana and Rick had moments when they really shone as characters, and I enjoyed their contentious interplay in the first half of the book. They made that part of the ride worth the trip.

I liked the solid foundation of personal history that shaped each of them as characters. Rick's loss of his brother was the source of his zeal to stop the cartel and take down its evil leader and Juliana's overprotective fervor for her brother and the desperation that drives most of her actions was born out of her own childhood traumas. Those were nice, organic touches that helped define the characters and added a layer of believability.

That didn't necessarily make them consistently appealing, though. Rick was a bit of a dog, actually. He's a good looking guy who appreciates all women...especially the ones he can charm into bed. And he's very charming. Just ask him. I liked him most of the time, but have to admit, there were times when he came off rather shallow and manipulative with that charm of his.

Juliana frustrated me. I can't say I disliked her, exactly, but she seemed to have a stubborn resistance to anything resembling sense in the first half of the book and it made her seem very immature. I understood, even sympathized at times with her desire to keep her brother safe, but I can't say she went about it in the best ways.  Unfortunately, my biggest problem with her - and the book - came at just past the halfway mark, when out of nowhere she suddenly realizes she's in love with Rick - the same guy she's been openly distrustful of and withholding evidence from at every turn up to that point...and beyond.

I'm all for a healthy bit of lusty good times, but her love for him at that point in the story was way too abrupt and lacking in necessary foundation for my taste. In fact, I think I got a little whiplash from the shocking about-face.

Still, I think I could have accepted that shocker and still mostly enjoyed the second half of the book if the romance had been handled better from that point. Unfortunately, the chemistry between Juliana and Rick worked better for me before they got together than it ever did after. The relationship-centric scenes suffered from stilted, awkward dialogue that made me cringe in places and what little sexuality was included stayed closer to tepid, child-friendly levels of description. For fans of the more circumspect sex scene this might be a big plus for the book, but that's not where my preferences lie.

Too many other things went wrong for me from there, too. The brother Juliana is trying to protect comes off as selfish and a bit stupid, the thugs causing most of the trouble never really seemed all that threatening to me, and the plot threads surrounding the leak in the DEA office and the identity of the cartel's American partner were so anemic they offered nothing of substance to the plot. Between that and Rick's team, who lacked the definition necessary to give them any impact on the story at all, far too many of the golden opportunities to broaden the scope of the story or better layer the plot went unexplored and unrealized.

Had the romance not put such a damper on the read for me, maybe I would have been more forgiving of the limited suspense plot. This isn't a long book, so I'm less of a stickler in that regard. I may not have loved it, but I wouldn't have ended up as dissatisfied as I was. Unfortunately, too much of my overall impression of the story is hampered by what was, to me, a sometimes painful and odd romance arc. There were good points to both the characters and the story in this book, but the bad outweighed them for me this time.

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 Romance
Series: Execution Underground, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 376 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by HQN Books publisher Harlequin via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





When it comes to werewolves, no one hunts them better than Execution Underground operative Jace McCannon. He is relentless and unforgiving, a hunter with a fierce intensity and dedication to his job. Problem is, if the organization knew exactly why he was as proficient a hunter as he is, it would be Jace who would be hunted to extinction.

As it is, he's already in enough trouble with his boss. There's a vicious rogue werewolf on the loose and the carnage he's leaving in his wake is enough to make even a seasoned hunter like Jace shudder at what is done to the female victims. For three weeks he has tracked the frustratingly elusive fiend and time is running out - for Jace and for the monster's next victim.

The latest crime scene turns up his first big break, a werewolf crouched in the shadows watching him examine the fresh kill. If Jace were human, running a werewolf to ground would be impossible, but he isn't human. Not completely. He's half werewolf, and highly motivated to catch the monster who left another woman's brutalized body in a gutter.

Being chased by a hunter is not Frankie Amato's idea of a good time, especially when the hunter on her tail is so much faster and stronger than she expected. Cornered and forced to shift into her human form to plead her case, the pack alpha has no one to blame but herself when Jace takes her into custody. Now she's got to figure out a way to convince the hunter that she can help him track down the killer before she ends up as his throw rug.

As he's made no bones about his loathing of her kind, she has no idea how to do that exactly, but if she and Jace don't work together, more innocent women will die.


This book did not work for me at all. I liked the idea of it but the actual read gave me a lot of trouble. I pretty much hated Jace throughout the book. I found nothing even remotely heroic or noble about the man. He's an alcoholic, self-loathing prick who treats everyone around him like crap because of some deep-seeded daddy issues. I just wanted him to get the hell over it already and look at the bigger picture, but no.

He was also horribly inconsistent, especially when it came to the relationship he has with Frankie. It was as if he had a bad case of emotional ADD, wavering back and forth between disdaining everything about Frankie to getting all wounded when she holds back her feelings from him...often from one page to the next. And I have very little tolerance for lack of communication being the source of relationship conflict in my romance. Their relationship was littered with it.

Frankie wasn't as bad. I can't really say I liked her throughout, but at least she didn't make me mental. There were moments when I liked her, and I very much appreciated the fact that she's her pack's alpha, but I wish she had been a little stronger in both power and personality to better reflect that position. She was just a little too submissive to Jace, and too willing to take all the bad stuff he dished out at her and love him anyway, for me to take her seriously as an apex predator and competent leader of her people. Didn't help that my first impression of her included her running and hiding from her responsibility.

The story did have its good points, but I struggled there, as well. The world didn't seem all that fleshed out to me. The mythos surrounding skinwalkers was original in theory but I thought the backstory and explanation was an unclear muddle (and in reference to how a skinwalker transitions into a berserker, just flat-out disturbing in context). I also never felt I had a firm handle on the Extermination Underground itself, and given that the series is titled after the organization (so I assume it's important) that was a problem for me.

In fact, every time the EU or its members had impact in the story, there was little more offered than a poorly defined but explosive conflict between Jace and the local EU director Damon. That conflict was too all-encompassing to allow me to get a feel for any of the other characters or the organization as a whole. And I was sincerely disappointed that there was no resolution for their absurd and over-the-top dick-swinging contest.

That actually smacks at the core of my issues with the book, though. For all that the ideas were sound, the story as a whole seemed bereft of nuance and subtlety. If there was an emotion expressed, it was sweeping and dramatic, if there was an action taken, it was balls-to-the-wall, no holds barred. Conflict was furious and deadly, sex was intense and often angry, characters were tortured, romance was angsty. It was all just...so much noise that the sum total just struck me not as a tapestry of plot, character, and world, but as a brute force cacophony: chaotic, hard-hitting, and lacking sophistication.

I wouldn't say I'm sorry I read this one, but I also can't say I'd be interested in continuing the 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: Paranormal Romance
Series: N/A
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 247 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Covet publisher Entangled Publishing LLC via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Vampire Liaison Valerie Craig has a big, bad situation on her hands. There have been a rash of bloodings lately, vampires draining human victims, and an increase in derangements, or a transformation from human to vampire that went wrong. She has no choice but to take the matter to the king and queen of the vampire nation and ask for help to put an end to the crimes.

There are a couple of problems with her goal, however. First, Valerie loathes vampires with a deep and highly bigoted passion, so dealing with them in person always gives her a case of the willies. Even if she can get a handle on that reaction, she's got to simultaneously convince two members of undead royalty that there is a problem, and that their own people are responsible, without making one single political misstep lest the temperamental Immortalis Dominorum view her accusations as an aggressive act, potentially kicking off an inter-species war in the process. The sort of war that would not go well for the human population.

As it turns out, the vampires do something even worse than start a war. They give her one single vampire to act as her backup and mouthpiece during her investigation. And if Val's instinctive reaction to the king and queen of Dominorum is bad, then the foul-mouthed, bad-tempered killer Kade is going to give her convulsions.

She hates vampires, he hates humans, and they will have to rise above their prejudices to work together to stop the killings and prevent a war that would decimate the population of both their peoples.


I think I should have reviewed this book sooner, because the more time that's passed since I finished it, the more problems I have with the story upon reflection. There were some nice, fresh elements in the world building and concept of the plot. I enjoyed the vampire caste system and the idea of the Vampire Liaison Office for which Val works. The external conflict of the investigation into the bloodings may have been a bit pedestrian, but it was introduced well and fleshed out enough to sustain the narrative. It also provided a nice framework for the relationship arc between the two main characters.

Unfortunately, all those good individual pieces weren't assembled in a way that appealed to me. I struggled with the characters, their romance, and various plot points and story elements that either didn't make sense in the framework of the story or contradicted previously established mythos. It all just ended up seeming a bit of a frenetic mess.

My concerns started early in the book. Val's ignorance and militant bigotry was so extreme it was off-putting. She was working on legislation that would eventually result in the eradication of an entire race of sentient beings because her ex-husband was a douchebag to her. Thousands of people expendable because one guy did her wrong. That made it sort of hard for me to warm up to her as the romantic heroine.

To make matters worse, she was a hypocrite. She blasts her friend Graham for going gaga over the vampire Rex and Domina when he meets them, but five minutes after meeting Kade she does the same thing. I was far into the book before her character evolved enough for me to find her tolerable, and even then she was too inconsistent for me to really like her.

I did like Kade, though. Quite a lot. Problem is, he's supposed to be this foul-mouthed tough guy. So much so that the book is titled accordingly. Except he wasn't. Oh sure, there was profanity, and every once in a while he'd blurt out something...earthier than what one would hear in normal polite conversation, but it never struck me as egregious, nor was it consistent throughout the narrative. And by the end of the book there were more cheesy-romance mouth moments than bad mouth moments.

Val still reacted to his language throughout the book like he was a drunk sailor with poor impulse control. It got tiresome.

They did have solid sexual chemistry, and had the timeline of the story occurred over a longer span than the handful of days it does, the romance would have been a plus for me. Val and Kade just went into it with way too much baggage for me to buy that they'd get over their prejudices and fall in love in less then a week. I don't like romance arcs that culminate that quickly to begin with, and these characters started with pretty virulent antagonism that quick-flashed into romance melodrama well before the end of the book. It didn't work for me.

There were some interesting secondary characters that had surface appeal, but none of them were really fleshed out in any great detail. If I'm dealing with a series that will feature those characters as protagonists in their own book at a later time, that lack of character definition doesn't bother me as much, but nothing I've seen has mentioned that's the case with this book so I wasn't even able to be really happy with them.

Other niggling details, like seeming contradictions in established mythos (Graham bounced back faster than I thought was possible), moments of character stupidity, questionable timelines, and a Big Bad's suspect motivations all served to muddy the waters more than they entertained. And boy howdy, that Big Bad took the concept of a Long Game to extremes far beyond insidious Machiavellian intent and straight into delusional idiocy. I'm still not sure I understand the reasons behind it all.

To be fair, I didn't dislike the book while I was reading it. I didn't love it, but it was okay. It wasn't until I gave it a few days to marinate in my mind, though, that the sum the issues that had built up throughout the story started to wear down my opinion of the read. It may have had all the right pieces, but it just didn't put them together in a way that left me happy with the book. I would like to revisit the world, though. There's potential there.

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: The Asylum Tales, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 338 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: A copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Gage has always known that being the best tattoo artist in Low Town has its price. All magic does, and that's what his skin art is, magic. Simple spells, really. For luck, or love, or any sundry little and  not-so-little thing. Still, since he escaped the warlocks of the Ivory Tower at the cost of the use of magic, among other, equally unpleasant things, any unauthorized use is enough to sign his death warrant if he's found out.

That's why Gage is so good at living under the radar. Or he was until the night a dying young woman came into his shop and asked to have angel wings tattooed on her back.

With a tug of sympathy guiding his hand, Gage worked on the ingredients in the tattoo ink. He couldn't cure the woman. No magic tattoo could cure cancer. He may be able to extend her life a little, or improve it slightly before she died. It would be his gift to a brave girl for whom he felt an odd kinship.

Unfortunately, Gage forgot one very important thing: no good deed goes unpunished. His tattoo works in ways he couldn't possibly have imagined, and now he's got Ivory Tower thugs hunting him down like a dog and the grim reaper in a snit about what he's done. So much for living under the radar. Hell, Gage will be lucky just to live to see the dawn.


As much as I loved the idea of this story and felt the world that Drake has created for the series was dark, dangerous, and imaginative, I couldn't connect to this one like I wanted to. Most of my problem with the book lies with Gage. Between his attitude and his actions, he was fairly unpalatable to me as the hero.

He lies to every single person in his life, even those who mean the most to him, and they often pay steep prices for his perpetual bad choices. And for someone who is trying to stay away from warlocks, he sure did manage to stumble and flail around through his days like he's thumbing his nose at them at every turn. I just didn't find very much to recommend him as either a man or a warlock in the story.

The secondary characters had the potential to balance out some of my issues with Gage, but most never really got the sort of definition or depth needed to make them seem much better than two dimensional cutouts to me. Those that did get some development weren't included in the story enough to have as much impact as they could have.

That was a particular problem when it came to Trixie, who is supposed to be a love interest of Gage's. It was a relationship that never seemed natural or organic to the story or the characters. I never felt a drop of emotional or sexual chemistry between them, despite Gage's alleged two-year infatuation with her, and the relationship plot threads seemed to serve little purpose beyond adding yet another dangerous, hopeless situation to Gage's plate.

And that plate was ridiculously overburdened. The plot just kept churning out life-threatening or world-ending catastrophes one after another after another in a seemingly never-ending stream of badness, with no relief and little levity to balance the depressing weight of them all. Though the book does end on a positive note, it wasn't enough of a payoff for the chaotic and depressing journey.

There really is a difference between damaged antiheroes and self interested jerks, just as there is a difference between complex, layered plot conflict and relentless story quagmire. For me, this book tread on the wrong side of the line in both those categories and it ended up being a less than entertaining read as a result.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: Adrenaline Highs, Book 4
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 293 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.





Private Investigator Troy Mills enjoys his job, cheating spouse cases notwithstanding. Unfortunately, he's on one such case, working undercover as a bodyguard for a popular movie producer while he waits to get the proof that the wife hired him to find. Proof that her husband is sleeping with America's Sweetheart, actress Julie Fraser.

He hadn't been working undercover long when he first meets the former child star under less than auspicious circumstances. He's "guarding" the producer at a red carpet event when Julie arrives, but she doesn't make it into the building before the shots ring out, sending the crowd into chaos and knocking the star off her feet. Racing to her side to pull her bleeding body out of the line of fire, he manages to help save her life and takes a bullet for his efforts.

Julie has been an actress long enough to have no more illusions about the darker side of fame, but she never expected to be gunned down for it. Recovering in the same hospital as the man responsible for that very recovery gives her a chance to thank him personally. Not only is he her hero, but he's also the sort of decent, honest man she wants to get to know even better.

When repeated attempts to end her life prove Julie wasn't just a victim of random violence, Troy finds himself on shaky ground. Telling her who he really is will do more than just piss her off and ruin any good feelings she may have towards him, it could very well put her in the crosshairs of a determined killer.


I've been a big fan of the Adrenaline Highs series since its inception, and the previous book, Dangerously Close, was my favorite to date. That's why it sucks so much to have to say that this one didn't appeal to me. I struggled with the narrative and the characters, as well as several elements of the plot, throughout most of the book.

Adams has always brought vibrantly flawed or damaged, believable, three-dimensional characters to life on the pages, characters who are uniquely individual and original. I just wasn't getting any of those vibes from either Julie or Troy in this book. Julie was a little too sweet, nice, caring, and perfect for my taste (which isn't bad so much as it is uninteresting) and Troy was a lying douchebag.

Um...yeah...there may be some personal bias bleeding over into that opinion, but I'm sorry, there were a dozen times he could have come clean with Julie before they slept together and the fact that he not only didn't tell her the truth, but perpetuated the lie throughout the story, made me very uncomfortable with him as the romantic hero and set up what felt like a cliched and predictable suspense climax late in the book.

And that's beside the point that I thought the premise for his investigation was a stretch. He's been hired by producer Ari's unhappy wife to get proof he's sleeping with Julie so the wife can divorce Ari's lecherous ass. That's fine on the surface, but I kept wondering why the wife's focus was so specific. Her husband is a sleaze who apparently bounces so many wannabe starlets on the "acting couch" that if extramarital sex were an Olympic event he'd have had the gold. If Troy was even remotely competent as an investigator he should have been able to provide proof of infidelity in no time. Mandating that the proof be her husband's adultery with Julie never made sense to me.

That was a pretty big stumbling block for my willing suspension of disbelief, and it caused problems for me as it related to the entire setup of the plot. There were also several plot threads, like what was going on between Julie's and Troy's assistants and the backstory of Troy's childhood, that weren't fleshed out enough to have any positive impact on the story. They just served to muddy the waters and bog down the pace of the suspense, and that pace was already pretty slow because of a narrative that was heavy on narration and light on dialogue.

There were good points, too, though. I did love the repartee between Troy and Julie in the beginning of the book, and I didn't dislike Julie as a character. She was cute and harmless, she just wasn't all that complex. My only issue with her as the romantic heroine, really, is that when compared to the other female leads in the series, she wasn't nearly as compelling or memorable.

Actually, that pretty much sums up my feelings about this book in general.

I've enjoyed this series, and have been highly entertained by Adams' deft talent for creating pulse-pounding romantic suspense. This book may not have been for me, but even the most adrenaline-pounding thrill ride in the world has its moments of down time. I have no doubt that the next in the series will have my adrenaline racing just as fast and high as did the three previous books.


The Adrenaline Highs Series:

Genre: Historical Romance
Series: Fairy Tales, Book 4
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Avon Books publisher HarperCollins Publishing via Edelweiss. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Theodora Saxby suffers no illusions. She's heard the whispers, knows very well what she looks like. Theo has no qualms about acknowledging that her profile is mannish and she does not have the plushest of physical attributes that are gracing the ballrooms this season. She's adjusted as best she can, crafted her wit to snag a husband who could at least find her interesting.

All she needs is a polite introduction to the one on whom she's set her sights. After all, she's not without benefit to a potential suitor. She'll inherit a vast wealth and her dowry will be substantial. And Theo has long-range plans. As soon as marriage has given her some freedom, she'll immediately set about dressing as befitting her form and coloring. That alone should help, though she knows she'll never be beautiful.

She needs the help of her childhood friend, the boy - now a handsome young man - with whom she had been raised. His father the Duke had kindly taken in both Theo and her mother after Theo's father, the Duke's best friend, died. Now, as soon as she convinces James Ryburn, heir to the Duchy of Ashbrook, to introduce her to the dashing man she wants as a husband, everything will be just fine.

Theodora Saxby had no idea that it would be James, her dear, beloved James, the same James who persists in calling her Daisy no matter how hard she tries to get him to stop, who would sweep her off her feet and marry her while her head is still spinning. She didn't know that two blissful days as his wife would be the very best time of her short life. And she could not possibly have guessed, or ever, ever imagined, that it would end in such a brutal fashion, betrayal flaying the heart from her chest, cruelly stripping away everything in her life that she had thought was good, true, and honest.

Leaving nothing in its path but the broken wings and ravaged plumage of one ugly Duchess.


This book gave me fits. Eloisa James is proven in her craft, writing sweeping, emotional historical romance. She can certainly tell a captivating tale. Still, several elements of this story didn't sit well with me at all. There were moments early in the book when I thought it was going to be okay, when I saw James and Theo's relationship as they first married. I felt comforted by the genuine love between them, even knowing it would have to come crashing down at some point.

Of course I loathed the Duke and think he should have been gut shot and left to bleed out slowly, but regardless of the horrendous betrayal that's disclosed in the opening chapter, James did love Theo, and despite his guilt, did marry her with true feelings in his heart. That went a long way with me. And I liked Theo, too. I appreciated her forthright honesty and her sense of humor.

Then it exploded in a hail of emotionally devastating bad choices made by all.

From the moment Theo finds out about the theft of her inheritance all the way through to the end I had my jaw clenched and my hands fisted on my Kindle. And honestly, maybe even surprisingly, not all of my animosity was pointed at James.

Oh, don't get me wrong, quite a lot of it was, but not all of it.

James Ryburn was a hideous emotional coward who lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up for what he believed in or fight for who he loved. He then compounded that egregious character flaw by embracing his inner reprehensible narcissist, spending seven long years gallivanting around the high seas like some hapless cad, thinking only of himself.

Then again, Theo kicked him out and told him quite clearly that she never wanted to see him again, even informed him that he should remove himself from the country. He took her at her word, so she was certainly not blameless. She was also not always a completely endearing character. For all that she felt horrible when labeled rudely for her looks, she was known to be rather sharp-tongued and openly critical of others. After the betrayal her personality often seemed unappealingly cold and biting.

Of course, James does return to England eventually. Problem is, when he is face to face with Theo again he is an arrogant, contemptible, cavalier ass, lacking in even the merest glimmer of contrition or apology for past bad acts. Sure, he spouts some romantic drivel about Theo being the other half of his soul, but by that point all I could do was gape in astonishment, because he continues to regard his seriously bad judgement and worse actions as inconsequential.

He also seems to suffer from the unconscionable belief that everything will be just fine between him and his wife as soon as he can toss her skirts up once or twice.

For all that I detested the man at that point in the story, there were still moments when Theo and James together was a good thing, even moments (however brief) when their romance worked for me. And honestly, I'm glad they found their way to a Happily Ever After. I'm just disappointed - and in some cases, horrified - about how it all developed. I needed more than what the book provided to help me get over all the horrendously bad choices and actions. Unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me.

Genre: SciFi Romance
Series: Zodius, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 382 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle




He's not human. Not anymore, anyway. Michael Taylor is one of the soldiers injected with alien DNA as part of a secret military project and scientific experiment intent on creating super soldiers, the perfect weapons. What it created, though, what Michael and others like him became, was more than anyone had expected.

Dr. Cassandra Powell isn't just the daughter of the general in command of the GTECH soldiers, she's been assigned to Project Zodius to study and evaluate the soldiers and the effects of their mutated DNA. She had no intention of getting personally involved with her subjects. She had no defense, however, for the intent and eerily powerful Michael.

They were drawn to each other, neither able to stay away. He thrilled her even as he made her nervous. She soothed him even as she stirred his blood. The mating mark and subsequent lifebond was the inevitable result of their affair.

Then Cassandra's world explodes when her father moves to imprison all the GTECHS who have tested positive for the X2 gene, a gene that seems to be connected to increased aggression and emotional instability. Problem is, the GTECH soldiers with the gene are less than keen on being imprisoned. In an angonizing instant, the X2-positive Michael is standing before her, her father's throat in his hand.

His support of the leader of the rebel soldiers, an evil and extremely aggressive GTECH named Adam, seems a heartbreaking reality. And on a whisper of the wind that speaks to him, he's out of her life. Has she been in love with traitor? Has Michael given in to the impulses of his mutated X2 gene and sided with evil against the country he's served so faithfully? And how can Cassandra survive the loss of him if he has?


I freely admit I'm a bit twisted, because when faced with a premise such as the one on which this series is based, I can't help but chuckle. See, I love reading a book about the debacles and disasters created by the combination of humanity's limitless arrogance and ignorance, especially when added to the Molotov cocktail of doom that is the incendiary mix of power and ego.

It's true. I do. And every time I come across one, I remember that line from Jurrassic Park which so aptly summed up the reason that movie was so damn terrifying:

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could they didn't stop to think if they should."

Yup. Give a few "brilliant" scientists a few strings of alien (or dinosaur) DNA, throw in a military-funded budget and at least one power-hungry egomaniac with a god complex, make sure remove all conscience, and of course they're going to try to create the ultimate soldier in the genetics lab equivalent of an Easy-Bake oven, with no concept or apparent concern for the long-term potential for badness. And man, there's always a lot of long-term potential for badness.

Soon as I read "alien DNA" I knew how this book was going to evolve and pegged several of the archetypal characters. I sat back, popped some popcorn, and prepared to enjoy the glorious devastation that was to come. And had this been slated solely as a science fiction novel, I probably would have ended up feeling more positive about what I read. I would still think the plot was a bit chaotic, but it could have been entertaining. Unfortunately, it also tried to be a romance, and in that it was a spectacular fail for me.

The romance between Cassandra and Michael was practically nonexistent, and I thought the timeline of their relationship was decidedly peculiar. Their presence in the story seemed to be limited by the overly ambitious plot. It hampered their characterization and crippled whatever emotional connection they had. And I'm so tired of the "I want him/her but I can't have him/her" mindset in the hero or heroine when it comes to romantic conflicts. It's never been a favorite theme of mine, but it feels like I can't open a book lately without stumbling across one or both main characters angsting themselves to death over that shit. I find it trite and boring.

The book had a great premise, and I love the concept for the series. This story and these characters, though, didn't work for me. There was so much plot crammed into the book and the world-building and setup were so immense that everything sort of degenerated into a chaotic jumble as the storyline progressed. And the romance was as good as not there. For me, it was all just a mess of too many characters, too many plot threads, too many conflicts, too little that consistently appealed...it was all just too much.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Seascape, Book 2
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 375 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Bell Bridge Books via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Dr. Bess Cameron is an excellent psychologist, counseling those who call in to her radio show on all matters of the heart. It's a career that fulfills her. One in which she excels.

Of course, if the station owner or her listening audience had any idea that she was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce and had been separated from her husband for years, she'd be out of a job. But that is a very closely held secret. Or it was, until a complete stranger calls and reveals that secret on air, throwing Bess' life into even greater turmoil.

She doesn't know who Tony is, or how he got his information, but she's completely shaken. She turns to a couple of good friends for support and ends up standing in their art gallery, staring at a painting that touches something deep inside her. It calls to her, drawing her to Maine and the Seascape B&B. She has no idea why she's so certain, but she's absolutely positive that she will find a precious sliver of peace there.

Private investigator John Mystic still loves his wife, knows he failed her as a husband just as he failed a dear friend as an investigator. He refuses to divorce Bess, though, until she agrees to take alimony, and she's being unreasonable on the matter. Now that news of the divorce has been made public, he's even more determined to make sure she's taken care of, no matter what it takes.

If he has to follow her to Maine and camp out at Seascape with her until she agrees to his terms, so be it. He just wasn't quite as prepared for dealing with a meddling ghost named Tony.


While the first book in this trilogy totally blew me away and appealed to me on many levels, I struggled with this second installment. Part of the problem is my own fault. I was pleasantly surprised and unprepared for the mystical elements and fabulous romance in the first, but I was expecting them in this one, and they just didn't live up to the expectation.

I was wise to Tony's story and his influence at Seascape, so that influence wasn't quite as mysterious here. It also lacked the darker edges of potential threat that kept me so off balance the first time around. He stuck his nose in a little too much for me, as well, until he seemed more like a secondary character than the briefly glimpsed guiding hand he was in the first. For me, less is more when it comes to Tony.

Then there were the main characters, Bess and John. I didn't like them and I hated the relationship conflict that was belabored throughout the book. That conflict is prevalent in second chance romances, one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of the theme.

These two characters supposedly love one another, always have, but they destroyed their relationship on the first go-round because they were completely incapable of honest communication, refused to show any sort of potential vulnerability, and wouldn't know how to express an honest emotion if it was beating them over the head. Like I wanted to do to them both. Often.

That's not relationship conflict, that's cowardice. I don't find emotional cowards to be all that romantic, and it was the main issue between them throughout the whole book, coming up in the story again and again with equal intensity and fervor. The unnecessary angst of it all overwhelmed the good points to such a degree that the romance was an utter fail for me.

Had there been a more gradual arc of acknowledgement, communication, and resolution throughout the narrative - and there could have been, there certainly were enough issues - I would have felt much differently about the whole relationship between them. I would have liked the characters more, too. Bess is supposed to be a psychologist, after all, but there was no professional light turned on the shadows of her personal life. And John was oblivious to the concept of healthy relationships. He could have used her professional advice, instead of letting his case come between them for so damn long. Man, they frustrated me.

Parts of this book were deeply emotional and poignant. Not all of it was disappointing. The town and the characters in it were just as charming as they were in the first book, and the plot threads surrounding the missing persons case John's been stuck on for years were interesting, if a little too abruptly resolved. The writing, too, was just as strong and the magic just as warm and heartening.

Unfortunately, not even all of that could balance out how much I disliked the relationship conflict or how disappointed I was in the main characters and their romance. But it did leave me with hope for the next book. I'll go in with fewer expectations, maybe, but I do believe the magic can be recaptured.

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Coveted, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 304 Pages
Formats: Mass Market 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.




Five years ago, werewolf Natalya Stravinsky lost the man she loved to a job across the country and the responsibilities inherent to the pack alpha's son. The devastation from that loss changed her, turned a quirky werewolf with OCD into a shadow of herself. While she was still reeling from that loss, she was put into an untenable situation at a pack event and she went a little crazy, making a scene and embarrassing her family.

As a result, she was kicked out of the pack. Her alpha refused to tolerate any individual weaknesses that could threaten the strength of the pack as a whole.

Now Nat lives on the outskirts of her own town, skulking around the edges as a lone wolf. Her home, her job...even her life is solely at the discretion of the pack alpha. With a word she could be banished from her town, even killed. Her relationship with her family is tense, she has no love life, and her OCD has worsened and expanded to include compulsive hoarding behavior.

On the bright side she's got the most diverse and extensive set of Christmas decorations...in the world.

She's living her life as best she can, getting through the days, when her ex-boyfriend Thorn returns to town to assume the mantle responsibility for a pack in crisis. The heat between them is still intense, the need as clear in his eyes as it is in Nat's heart. Problem is, Thorn is promised to another werewolf, a high ranking female of the pack. And that pack crisis, attacks from an encroaching pack intent on gobbling up their territory, paints a target on Nat's back because of her lone wolf status and her lack of pack protection.


I'm glad I went into this book knowing that it was an urban fantasy instead of a paranormal romance. I was able to focus on the world building, plot, and evolution of characters. In that regard, though, this is one of the more difficult types of books for me to rate and review.

I fully appreciate the originality and unique story elements Madison introduces in this series debut. I admire the risk she took with a main character not just flawed, but suffering a mental illness. There were also many lovely aspects of solid storytelling here on every level, and I can completely understand why this book would appeal to many.

After a promising prologue, the first half of the book was a little slow for me, but that was more a minor issue. Unfortunately, this is just one of those stories that has a main character who is the absolute antithesis of my preferred type for heroes and heroines. I was completely incapable of connecting to her or garnering much in the way of sympathy for her myriad of psychological, ideological, and situational troubles.

This is my peccadillo, not the fault of the author, but I have little patience and less enthusiasm for demonstrably weak characters, especially female characters, and there aren't many I've read who are as excessively passive in their subjugation as Natalya.

And let me just say, I was so disgusted by Thorn and his treatment of Nat, treatment masquerading as concern and star-crossed emotion, of course, that I would have happily turned him into a wolf-skin rug and nailed his furry butt to my wall. Every time Nat turned around after he'd returned to town, Thorn seems to pop up, even sneaking into her room and stirring her body, mind, and heart.

That'd be all kinds of all right if he wasn't virtually engaged to another woman. He flat-out says he has no choice in his future, but if that's the case, man the hell up. Don't torture the woman who still loves you with yearning, passion-filled looks and soft caresses even as you're telling her she can't have you. That's not only wrong, it's pathetic and cruel. Especially with Nat's obviously unhealthy mental and emotional state.

It sure as hell didn't endear Thorn to me as a character.

This is such a character-driven story, with the narrative told from Nat's perspective in first person, that my issues with her made it almost impossible for me to really enjoy the strengths and many pluses that the book offers. I was a little heartened as the end drew closer, though, and the climax of the book started to get rolling. Several enjoyable elements came together and Nat finally flashed some fang.

It was too little too late to pull this one out for me, but it may speak well for the next book in the series, or give a hint of future progress for Natalya. I'm just not sure yet if I'd be willing to return to this series and see if and how any character evolution develops. Unless of course, Nat suddenly switches the focus of her hoarding to male wolf statues with their head's forcibly removed. Bitten off would be good, too. I'm pretty sure I'd be all over this series at that point.

Genre: Historical Romance
Series: The White Series, Book 1
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 90,000 words
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




She is sixteen and alone in a wilderness she can't survive. Her parents are dead, cut down right in front of her. It's 1810, and Emily Ambrose is terrified, grief-stricken, and broken. And then she is found by a young Indian, one who guides her, protects her, provides for her, makes love to her. But never speaks to her. Until he too, leaves her.

Emily doesn't know why. Or what she did that made him leave. She knows she loves him and is devastated by his loss, even if she never knew his name. She knows her hope and confidence, and any meager joy she had found since watching her parents slaughtered, is gone. Not even the gentle kindness of the trapper John Cartier, the man who finds her after even her Indian left her, is enough to convince Emily she has any worth at all, or any hope for a future too bleak to survive.

From the moment John stumbles upon Emily in the woods, she's like sunshine to him, a bright source of warmth and joy. He can tell she's deeply wounded, emotionally drained. Fortunately, John's a patient and caring man, and he sees Emily as just another wild, traumatized soul who needs help similar to that he's always given the creatures of the forest. He yearns for her, but he knows, beyond doubt, that unless she's given space, time, and gentle handling, the bright light that shines in her will go dark forever. And that's just not acceptable to John.

He wants a chance at a future with Emily. She is forever to him. He just needs to convince her.


Originally published in 2002, White Dawn has been re-released along with the other eleven books in Edwards' popular White series. Western Romance novels aren't my favorite type of historical, but I was curious about this one and wanted to see where the series began. I wish I'd liked it more.

My issues had nothing to do with how the book was written. It's certainly authentic for the time and the story  is told with solid technical skill. There were some minor issues with a bit of repetition in some of the plot points, but that complaint was minor. The characters were nicely fleshed out, Emily's backstory intensely sympathetic, and John's past well-defined.

Unfortunately, I thought the first quarter of the book too harsh and depressing to be entertaining and I got very frustrated with Emily's character when she was mired in her depression. It was realistic, I suppose, and even understandable. There is such a thing as too realistic for me, though, and this is a good example of it.

Plus, I couldn't help but be a little squigged out by her relationships with both her Indian (because of the result) and John, who at ten years her senior seemed to have achieved an aura of adulthood that Emily had not. It wasn't the age difference - that' wasn't my problem. I just never felt Emily was all that grown up at any point. And that bothered me. I know that a sixteen-year-old was considered an adult back then. I do. But there wasn't enough maturity in Emily's character for me to forget or forgive the instinctive ick-factor of a young girl in her position.

I really liked John. Truly. He was a gentle giant and I loved how he related to the animals and to Emily. He was my favorite character in the book, hands down. His friends and his grandfather also made great secondary characters. I even liked Emily later in the book, when she'd warmed up to John and stopped being so depressed. There just wasn't enough of that for me to really appreciate her character in total.

The storyline was a little weird for me too. I know it's the first book in a well-developed series, but reading just this book on its own caused some problems for me. Swift Foot's backstory and his influence in Emily's life was not only depressing, his storyline cut off with no resolution and a sort of emotional downer. Maybe he's featured in other books, maybe he and his tribe play a part in later books, but it leaves a hole in this one. So did John's cousin. Not a good guy, obviously, but his storyline just sort of cut off suddenly with no resolution.

There were aspects of the book that I did enjoy. Plot points and characters that I found entertaining. Too few of them, though, for me to truly embrace the read or give me any interest in continuing the series to see if any of those threads that were left dangling get woven into subsequent books. This one's not for me.

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: N/A
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 247 Pages
Formats: Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Carina Press via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.



The grass is green. The sky is blue. There is no such thing as werewolves. Those are just some of the absolutes in tabloid reporter Andrea Lockhart's world, regardless of the stories covered in The Naked Truth, the rag she works for. Then the photo of some mysterious creature in some backwards town on the other side of the country came across her editor's desk and next thing Andrea knows, she's traipsing through the woods of Woodbine, South Carolina, looking for a creature that most assuredly does not exist.

The investigation into the local legend of the werewolf doesn't start off as she expected. She gets caught in a hunter's snare, trussed up like a wild boar, and comes face to face with the most painful memory from her college days. Sean Hunter. The ratfink she'd gone to college with, took journalism courses with, and who had beat her out for the job of editor of the school's paper. She had been overweight and mousy back then, and she had a huge crush on him. Right up until he'd verbally shredded her after he got her job.

Now Sean is living in Woodbine and is editor of the town's weekly circulation. To make matters worse, not only is he intent on accompanying her on her assignment, but he's doing one of his own on her investigation into the werewolf - that she is still quite positive does not exist. This Halloween nightmare of an assignment just keeps getting better and better.

The conversation - a kind word for an ugly truth - that Sean had with the incredibly intelligent if socially awkward Andrea Lockhart back in college is still one of his greatest regrets. He'd been cruel, if well intentioned, and he knew it. Now she's come to Woodbine looking...wow...considerably different than she did back in the old days. She's gorgeous. Poised. Cool as a cucumber. And she obviously wants nothing to do with him.

He thought they'd been friends once, if very very casual ones. He certainly wouldn't mind becoming much closer than friends now. Her job doesn't make sense, though. She'd been on the fast track of a major journalism career at one time. Working for an exploitative tabloid is about as far removed from that as she could get and still be in the business. He should know. He's fairly far removed from the beat of his own high-powered career as a reporter for a major New York City paper.

He has his reasons for that, though. Sean is sure Andrea has hers as well. He intends to discover what those are...as well as a myriad of other details about the amazing woman...as he helps her in her investigation into a werewolf that he's not entirely sure he believes exists. Though he doesn't exactly disbelieve it, either.

The grass is green. The sky is blue. Sean Hunter is even more appealing than he used to be. There is no such thing as werewolves. These are some of Andrea's absolutes. Until she comes face to fangs with something that threatens to rip one of those absolutes away from her forever. And it ain't the grass, the sky, or the hot editor with the nice smile.


I loved the concept of this book. I thought it was great, the X-Files-esque investigation into the Woodbine Werewolf sightings, the two reporters ferreting out evidence for and against the possibility, the developing proof of something existing, the certainty that it couldn't possibly be a werewolf, the worry that it was. Every element of that plotline worked quite nicely for me, and the investigative aspects were more cohesive, logical, believable, and tightly woven than in many romantic suspense books I've read.

Unfortunately the main characters gave me some trouble and I struggled mightily with the execution of the romance arc throughout the book. I also had some issues with the style of writing in the narrative in places, and got a little frustrated with the over-telling that bogged down the flow of the story and muddied the waters.

Andrea troubled me throughout the book. She was not light on backstory or defining characteristics, tons of them were tossed out, but they never seemed to be all that convincingly incorporated into the woman she has become. She's got a dead brother, dead best friend, survived a horrible accident, become the swan after a shy, ugly-duckling type youth...and despite all of that, there seemed to be little depth in Andrea's personality. Like the facts didn't really touch her, regardless of what readers are told.

What depth there was, especially when it came to her burgeoning relationship with Sean, never really dipped beneath surface concerns and pedestrian conflicts that had nothing to do with those major traumas in her past, and everything to do with one bitter conversation when they were in college. That seemed sort of superficial to me in context. Plus, she was such a yo-yo with her actions and emotions, not to mention her determination to leave, then stay, then leave, then stay, that I couldn't help but feel the whole relationship with Sean was transient.

Sean, on the other hand, struck me as a little too over-eager in his thoughts and feelings for Andrea. A little too quick to flare with jealousy, a little too intent on wanting her to stay...not telling her that, of course, just thinking it (because god forbid they have a mature conversation about their feelings and relationship intentions). He's a little too regretful about the things he said to her in the past, a little too...

Actually, that sums up my issues with Sean right there. He was just...a little too everything.

There was also way too much telling in the narrative for my tastes, especially things that didn't need to be told. In one case, after Andrea has spent significant time with Sean and it's clear that he's a good man, there is a scene between Andrea and her deceitful, aggressive ex-boyfriend. Following that scene I really didn't need a page of narration letting me know that Andrea has changed her mind about which one is the better man. It bogs down the pace of the story and spoon-feeds me information I'd rather glean on my own through character action and dialogue. That this particular example is also a total no-brainer didn't help matters, either.

Along with that issue, there were also some odd timeline jumps in the narrative that didn't make much sense to me. The story would be progressing along in real-time, then suddenly it would be the next morning or later that day. That's all well and good, I suppose, but then there would be a recap of what the characters had done in the interim and what new developments had occurred. So...why not just keep it in real time and show us instead of recapping? Those little jumps popped up throughout the book, seemed random, and struck me as a peculiar stylistic choice.

I ended up feeling frustrated by this book. I truly enjoyed the external conflict and the execution of the investigative elements surrounding it. I even liked the secondary characters and thought the main characters were great when they weren't dealing with the emotional or romantic aspects of the story. The romance was such a problem for me, though, and the execution of the book bothered me so much in places, that I just didn't feel good about the overall reading experience.

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Demons, Book 2
Rating: 2 Stars
Length: 343 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Sourcebooks Casablanca publisher Sourcebooks via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.


As a powerful witch-healer, Doctor Lili Carter knows she is uniquely qualified to get a job at Crying Souls Hospital and try to figure out what happened to her good friend Sera. A new nurse at the hospital, Sera had been excited about her job. She and Lili had communicated almost every day, Sera trying to talk Lili into transferring and working there with her.

Then the calls and mail stopped. Abruptly.

When Lili got concerned and called the hospital after not hearing from her friend for days, she was told Sera didn't work there any longer, that apparently she'd failed to report in to work one day and no one had heard from her since. Now Lili is back at the hospital she once worked at decades ago. And it doesn't take long for her to figure out that something isn't at all right at Crying Souls.

After meeting the head of the hospital and getting her first look at the mental ward in the basement, Lili has a pretty good idea where to start her investigation. It's a dark, ominous place reminiscent of the worst madhouses in history. And the head of the hospital oversees it directly. It's painfully obvious some of the creatures down there are being mistreated. One of them, though, shocks Lili to her core.

She can barely believe her own eyes, but she's seen the prisoner more than once. Out of the hospital. First in Inderman's magickal plane, then again in her own house. But the sexy, charming demon who had mysteriously slipped through all her wards in no way resembles the filthy, battered creature in the dungeon-like cell. He'd been clean, first of all, and his clothes hadn't been rags. Oh, yeah, and he hadn't been criminally insane, either.

Shadow demon Jared knows he isn't going to be leaving Crying Souls anytime soon. Not after his own kind had been convinced he was mentally unstable. Still, he survives the torture and pain of incarceration, living for those minutes and hours when the shadows can spirit him away from his cell, slipping him out into the real world until his energy wanes and they pull him back.

He'd met the pretty witch on one such jaunt. Jared still wasn't sure how he ended up in her home the second time, but he's not complaining. He likes the feisty little healer. Really likes her. And even though he knows it's hopeless, Jared loves how determined she is to get him out of there.

But Jared knows the truth. No one is ever released from the dungeon under Crying Souls hospital. Not without dying first.


Given how I enjoyed the first book in Wisdom's Demons series, I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, the plot was a little chaotic and the characters didn't appeal to me as much as Maggie and Declan did in the first book. I didn't dislike Lili or Jared, really. They didn't do anything particularly annoying...well...other than Jared's habit of reminding Lili that demons do it better - that got old for me relatively quickly. They didn't stumble across any of my lines, though, or push any of my big character no-no buttons, so that was good. I just didn't connect with them and didn't think their chemistry was particularly strong. Nor did their romance seem based on anything more substantial than a physical chemistry that I couldn't quite feel.

The plot was another issue. There were several elements that lacked sufficient explanation for me. Little things, really, but the sum of them impacted my ability to just relax into the story. Why when Jared shadow located did he show up all clean and in nice clothes, unmarked from the abuse he suffered? Why, when Lili had proof of wrongdoing in the hospital, was she on her own to fight it? She hadn't struck me as a terribly powerful force, but she was intent on going against a very powerful force. Questions like that plagued me throughout the book.

Secondary characters had less of a role in this book that in the preceding book, and I didn't find them as varied and fascinating. The setting of the book was also, like the characters, just okay for me. I have no real complaints, but it just didn't appeal to me as much as the Guard compound and the house that Maggie had. The impression I was left with was that this book was just a little...smaller somehow...than the first book.

Like the first book, though, I thought the ending of the external conflict was a bit abrupt. Not as bad, but still a bit anticlimactic after the story elements that preceded it. What was there, though, didn't appeal to me. It seemed  less an organic escalation of growing madness and nefarious intentions and more a bit contrived and forced to get the characters into the positions they found themselves in.

I was a little surprised that the second book had so little to do with the first. The only points connecting them in the series is the fact that both lead males are demons (which would explain the series title) and both heroines know each other as friends. The differences may appeal to some readers, but I was hoping for more from the Hellion Guard and some of the characters I met in the first installment. For those starting the series at this point, though, this book reads perfectly well as a stand-alone.

The good thing for me is that it's clear after two books that Wisdom can write creative, entertaining narratives. This one just didn't strike the same chord in me as the first did. I may not have been wowed by the elements in this story, and some of them weren't pleasing at all, but there is a style and sophistication in the way Wisdom puts her words together and creates story that does appeal to me. I really want to see if the next book is more to my tastes in character and story.