Tag Archives: Paranormal romance

Diamond Fire

Book Review of Diamond Fire, by Ilona Andrews

I pre-ordered a paperback copy of Ilona AndrewsDiamond Fire and then let the little sliver of a book sit on my shelf for months.

Description from Goodreads:

Catalina Baylor is looking forward to wearing her maid of honor dress and watching her older sister walk down the aisle. Then the wedding planner gets escorted off the premises, the bride’s priceless tiara disappears, and Rogan’s extensive family overruns his mother’s home. Someone is cheating, someone is lying, and someone is plotting murder.

To make this wedding happen, Catalina will have to do the thing she fears most: use her magic. But she’s a Baylor and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for her sister’s happiness. Nevada will have her fairy tale wedding, even if Catalina has to tear the mansion apart brick by brick to get it done. 

Review:

 

You know, I still swear this series has the worst covers ever. But I do still quite enjoy the stories themselves. I thought this was a pleasant little bonus to the series as a whole. Getting to know Nevada’s sisters was fun and seeing Rogan and Nevada from someone else’s perspective was too. It is a novella and reads as such. It’s no where near as developed as a whole novel. All in all, I look forward to the…well, the spin-offs, since I suppose Rogan and Nevada’s arc is finished. (Though there is a Hidden Legacy 4 coming out in August 2019.)

Book Review of Angel’s Blood and Archangel’s Kiss, by Nalini Singh

I borrowed audio copies of book one and two of Nalini Singh‘s Guild Hunter series (Angel’s Blood and Archangel’s Kiss) through Hoopla and my local library.

Description through Goodreads:

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux is hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael. But this time, it’s not a wayward vamp she has to track. It’s an archangel gone bad.

The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other—and pull her to the razor’s edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn’t destroy her, succumbing to Raphael’s seductive touch just may. For when archangels play, mortals break.

Review:

This is a hard book to rate because though it was OK, it’s basically 10 years old and we readers demand a lot more out of our PNR now than we did 10 years ago, especially from the hero. And some of my biggest complaints about this book are things that I think authors do better about now (the publishing industry allows them to do better about). It’s a little impolite to judge a book written a decade ago by the standards of today, but my enjoyment was definitely effected by them. Hmmm….

So, the good. I liked Elena. She was a professional, good at what she did and strong without being a consistently rude (so many times authors try and write a strong woman an just write and angry bitch). I think the lore of the angels and vampires was an interesting one. All in all, I like the idea of the book and the narrator, Justine Eyre, did a fine job. 

The bad. There isn’t any romance. I saw lust between these two characters and I understood it, no problem. But they didn’t even seem to like each other, let alone love. And the power divide between the two was too gaping to be crossed, IMO. I couldn’t see that Elena could or would ever be an equal in the relationship. What’s more, the sex was the sort that’s hot, but reads as if female bodies are made of steel and have to be jackhammered into. I cringed. 

The really bad. I cannot even count how many times I have written reviews in which I point out that the single other significant female in the book, other than the main character, is the jealous woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon and tries to steal a man. This plot device is so common that (though I couldn’t have articulated it) I mimicked it in writing in my very first attempt to write a story at age 10. Of course, I didn’t understand sexuality then, but the character I wrote had all the trademarks of the angry, jealous, vixen that can’t be trusted. Can we maybe stop feeding women the idea that other women can’t be trusted? I’m SO sick of seeing this in books. 

I’ll try book two. But if it’s not an improvement on this first book, I won’t read more. I imagine by 2009 standards it was a fine book, but by those of 2019 not so much.

Description from Goodreads:

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux wakes from a year-long coma to find herself changed—an angel with wings the colors of midnight and dawn—but her fragile body needs time to heal before she can take flight. Her lover, the stunningly dangerous archangel, Raphael, is used to being in control—especially when it comes to the woman he considers his own. But Elena has never done well with authority.

They’ve barely begun to understand each other when Raphael receives an invitation to a ball from the archangel, Lijuan. To refuse would be a sign of fatal weakness, so Raphael must ready Elena for the flight to Beijing—and to the nightmare that awaits them there. Ancient and without conscience, Lijuan holds a power that lies with the dead. And she has organized the most perfect and most vicious of welcomes for Elena.

Review:

Oh look, the requisite book where the hero takes the heroine and buys her a pretty dress. The cliches just keep coming. The book also continues the evil woman trend. There are three significant females, other than the heroine and her best friend—who are of course perfect (and I wouldn’t consider the friend significant)—and they are all evil. Every one. 

The plot was pretty obvious, both what would happen and who the villain(s) would be. It was tedious. I also just plain got tired of every man Elena spoke to hitting on her, even as they told her they’d happily kill her. Between all the innuendo with the other angels and vampires and the sex with Raphael I bored quickly. 

It’s a shame. I like the idea of this series, but I’m not interested in reading anymore of it. I basically couldn’t get done with this one fast enough, so I could walk away.

Coveted

Book Review of Coveted, by Shawntelle Madison

I picked up a signed copy of Coveted, by Shawntelle Madison in a second-hand shop.

Description from Goodreads:
For werewolf Natalya Stravinsky, the supernatural is nothing extraordinary. What does seem strange is that she’s stuck in her hometown of South Toms River, New Jersey, the outcast of her pack, selling antiques to finicky magical creatures. Restless and recovering from her split with gorgeous ex-boyfriend, Thorn, Nat finds comfort in an unusual place: her obsessively collected stash of holiday trinkets. But complications pile up faster than her ornaments when Thorn returns home—and the two discover that the spark between them remains intense.

Before Nat can sort out their relationship, she must face a more immediate and dangerous problem. Her pack is under attack from the savage Long Island werewolves—and Nat is their first target in a turf war. Toss in a handsome wizard vying for her affection, a therapy group for the anxious and enchanted, and the South Toms River pack leader ready to throw her to the wolves, and it’s enough to give anybody a panic attack. With the stakes as high as the full moon, Nat must summon all of her strength to save her pack and, ultimately, herself.

Review:
This was not very good. It was simply dull and inconsistent. One moment the narrator was going on about how Nat had no friends, the next her best friend was showing up on her doorstep. One moment she’s being treated like a pariah by her family, the next they’re there for her. (And visa versa, they flipped several times.) For the whole book Nat was completely spineless, super subservient and inferior to everyone, then she randomly whipped out the alpa attitude.

Then there was all the back and forwards with Thorn. The fact that he abandoned her five years earlier and basically ruined her life wasn’t ever addressed. This irritated me on two fronts. First that the loss of a man ruined her life and no one seemed to blame him for the dick move or give her time to grieve. (Instead they made her condition significantly worse by being inconsiderate and then further blamed her for the predictable results). Second he was never expected to apologize or even explain and she instantly forgave him. Worse, she’d been waiting for him for 5 years without word and didn’t seem to need to forgive him.

This forgiveness for men carried over in the whole book. Nat was thrown out of the pack and practically disowned by her family for not behaving just as they want (they called it being weak). But her brother was a womanizing ass, her father a killer, the alpha cruel, and her love was fickle and disloyal. Still, no one ever did anything by praise and support them.

I disliked the book. I can come up with a dozen reasons why, but the main one is that Nat was so weak, and whiny that I basically hated her. I thought her OCD was interesting, but that wasn’t enough to make me warm up to someone so willing to be a doormat and who shows NO GROWTH throughout the book.