Immortal Rising

Immortal Rising by Lynsay Sands
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh my gosh I really loved this one. Are we 34 books in? Yes. Do these books still somehow manage to surprise me? YES! I will keep reading these until we run out of characters to find mates for, or something. Please, never stop.

This book finally circles back to Stephanie. She's the self-proclaimed weirdo in the bunch who can hear everyone's thoughts for wayyyyyy further and without end. She's also at risk of becoming a "no-fanger" due to her forced turning by some lunatic. Her sister found her mate and never had the same troubles, so Stephanie's been a bit isolated, forced to hide most of her struggle for fear of upsetting her hyper-vigilant sister. When you can hear everyone's thoughts, it makes it harder to ignore the worries. She's finally landed in her custom build, secluded home and has a steady sort-of life with her pets. That all changes when Thorne shows up.

Thorne has his own baggage that has chased him all his life (sometimes literally). He was the son of yet another monster in this series. You'll be happy to know that this is the book where that storyline finally gets resolved in the best of ways. Thorne not only ends up crashing Stephanie's solitary existence, but also helping her find what she didn't even know was out there. It's the best kind of smutty, hot, awesome romance. Also, a great guest spot by the grumpy old man of the series (which for a vampire series is saying a lot). This book was everything I wanted.

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Demon Hunting with a Southern Sheriff

Demon Hunting with a Southern Sheriff by Lexi George
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow - I think I got in over my head with this book. Having only read one book in the series before (and that was 3 books prior) I was pretty lost for a lot of the very numerous character back stories here and did myself a disservice. Hark - learn from me and start at the beginning!

Dev is the sheriff of a town filled with humans and supernaturals alike. There's pretty much everything, including very determined hunters like Arta. She's got her own supernatural mojo and has been tasked with avenging her fighting sister. This ends up getting in Dev's way, because he is the law in these parts. He also has a relative who is a goddess or something and a dad who runs around naked. It is A LOT. I enjoyed the random and insane characters, but got a little lost in the shuffle.

The romance between Dev and Arta is definitely non-traditional. Instead of following the same rules, there is chocolate involved and nearly destroyed buildings. And sort-of-adopted siblings crashing the party. All in all, it was a wild ride that I was not prepared for, complete with a HEA.

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Shadow Kissed

Shadow Kissed by Rebecca L. Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was like a strange combination of a high fantasy setting (castles, royalty, various levels of technology) and a contemporary romance. It is clearly the setup for more installments, so focused primarily on the world building here. Not a true cliffhanger of sorts, but definitely not a solitary standalone book either.

Olivia has been somewhat sheltered her whole life. As someone gifted with magic, she is in the minority. It makes her even more strange when her powers are a bit of a dud. She does not excel at combat either, so her mother, the leader of an elite group of "troops," protects her as best she can. Mostly this means she is isolated and ferried away when bad stuff starts to go down. The vampires from the neighboring kingdom end up invading, and one vampire ends up kidnapping her to their home.

As predicted, Seb, the aforementioned vampire, ends up opening Olivia's eyes a bit to the shades of gray in the vampire kingdom. Not all vampires are bad and not all humans are good. There's a bunch of baggage rolled into that single sentence, but it resolves itself eventually. There are also a bunch of reveals that I won't spoil here for you. The romance, though, that was a smaller portion of the tale, which may or may not have come from some sort of kidnapper/kidnapee situation. Only time will tell, I guess, but I enjoyed all of the characters we meet during Olivia's stay with Seb. As I said, the book doesn't fully resolve all the storylines, so I'm sure the next book will take a turn. Oh, and I should warn that there are some triggering non-consent scenes in here that may be troubling to some, primarily in the vampire/human slave dens.

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Wicked Abyss

Wicked Abyss by Kresley Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While better than some of the more recent books, this is still pretty similar to some of the lesser installments.

We get back to the "bringers of doom" storyline with a deep dive into Sian. He's kind of a jerk, but I guess the trauma associated with losing his mate and transforming into a demon will do that to a guy. His mate has finally reincarnated into Lila, a princess of sorts who is going through a rough patch. Exiled to the human world, she's made her way and has an unkillable spirit. Kind of literally.

These two were really nicely matched for wits but Sian was just not a prize in the end. While I am really happy to get Lila's story, as with most of these books, I feel like she could do much better. She ends up shining brighter in this book than the guy I think we were supposed to be rooting for. I'm still hoping for a book where both the guy and girl and worthy of a nice pairing. Maybe next book?

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Lover Arisen

Lover Arisen by J.R. Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow! I think this book just made me fall in love with the Black Dagger Brotherhood series again!

After reading one of the spinoff books and being a little turned off by this world, I decided to give it another shot and I'm so glad I did. This book delivered in a lot of ways that I think fans have been asking for. There were not a lot of side stories (only the main love story, the building one, and some resolution that crosses between them), there was some good smut (not really a deficiency before), and we don't break a lot of things that we built up before. If this is your first time in the BDB world, I don't know how you got here as a first book. There is so much world and character building that has been done up to this point that I wouldn't really recommend starting 20 books in.

So, this story - we finally get Balthazar's resolution. Poor thief ended up getting possessed and finding his mate in very short time and then the series left him hanging out there. In summary it seems very simple - thief and cop have drama. Underneath, though, the characters were really interesting. I felt for both of them more than some previous characters, or even the ones that are moving in parallel to this love story. The odds are (of course) against them and we have to work up until the very end to get them a HEA, but it is very satisfying. Erika, the mate/cop/person, was a real standout here and I was happy she didn't have to become something she wasn't by the end. Overall, I'm happy I gave the BDB another chance because it was well worth it!

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Wicked Misery

Wicked Misery by Tracey Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book 1 and I'm already addicted to this world.

This is allllllmost a dystopian paranormal book, but is still in a magical land that I find slightly more palatable. In this world, magic is normal and people with magic are sent to become guardians of a sort until their powers either fizzle or solidify. Jessica was one of the "chosen" until she suddenly wasn't. When her powers didn't materialize, they shifted into something more unexplainable. She assumes she was cursed somehow to feed off misery instead of doing normal "magic" things. This classifies her very close to "preds" which in this world feed off "addicts" in various forms. Lucen is one such pred that has somehow found his way (reluctantly) into Jessica's very small inner circle.

With such a black and white moral world, Jessica is shaken up when she is suddenly accused of murder, possibly hoping to start a war between the paranormal races. This puts her in a position where she has to either accept herself, grow, and learn to trust other people, or perish as some sort of misunderstood martyr. It was really wonderful to watch a person who is pretty terrible at making decisions make a comeback by the end. I went from cringing to rooting for her, so hang in there!

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Third Spell's the Charm

Third Spell's the Charm by Susanna Shore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These are wonderful, quick, paranormally quirky books that have me rapidly devouring them.

This book picks up with Phoebe (quick note - you should start at book 1 for real enjoyment). She's newly discovered that she has the magical gift inside of her. Unfortunately for her, it comes out as setting things on fire - not on purpose. As if this isn't bad enough, she's forced to demonstrate her weirdness for her flatmates, her boss/crush, and really powerful magical users. Nobody seems to know what's going on, but that also doesn't stop her from attracting her usual share of trouble.

This trouble comes in the form of a drag queen murder by a vampire while Phoebe and her vampire flatmate are out clubbing. Implicated/Blackmailed into helping the big vampire baddie, they end up crossing paths with a few familiar faces, some new ones, but tons of trouble. I enjoy the blend here of mystery, a smidge of romance, and a healthy scoop of magic. I can't wait to see what happens after the end of this one!

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