Review: Lovers of Urban Fantasy, sit up, this one is for you.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 19, 2014
Emily Leighton has tried to distance herself from all things pack related, which isn’t easy since she is the sister of Alpha Sean Leighton, but she has done her best.  After a long absence from home, she is slowly acclimating herself back into the pack, due in no small part to her future sister-in-law Lily’s influence.  During a wild girl’s weekend away, Emily met the man of her dreams, skittish and unsure she tried to maintain a long distance relationship but her fears got the better of her and she broke it off.  NYPD Detective Ryan Martinez is every girl’s wet dream, good looking, caring, tough and sexy.  He didn’t know about his own dual nature until recently and has been struggling to come to terms with it.  Imagine his surprise when the woman of his dreams and nightmares appears at the side of his best friend Lily during her wedding.  Emily and Ryan will have to come to terms with their past while trying to rescue a kidnapped human woman from the clutches of an evil vampire and her were lover.  Things are rarely as they seem and both will have to reach deep into themselves to survive what comes next.Ms. Morea took a break from the Cursed by Blood series to try her hand at writing YA, but now she is back at her roots.  She leaves her native New York and takes us deep into northern California but this no joy ride.  Almost from the very beginning we are tossed into the fire with questions and mysteries galore.  Ms. Morea treats us to her slightly slanted sense of humor and more heat than you can stand action and suspense.We’ve met Emily and Ryan in the past but now we get to sit down and really get to know them.  Old friends return and we get to spend more time with vampire Remy, who we met before.  There is even a mention of characters from Blood Legacy, another of Ms. Morea’s books not in this series (and my favorite by the way).  New characters are introduced, we get a glimpse of cat culture and even a little Native American culture is thrown in.Ms. Morea flexes her writing muscles a little with this story and gives us a little different style to enjoy.  While there are supernatural beings in the story and it doesn’t lack for Ms. Morea’s scorching heat, this is more of a suspense/mystery story than the previous books in the series.  I did have my usual little niggles, nothing to turn me away from the story but they were there.  This is a pretty character rich story and there were times I did get a little lost and had to go back and re-read passages from past books to remember who was who.  I usually complain because most books in a series tend to have a lot of rehashing of the previous books which I hate, but I have to admit a little bit of back story might have been nice.  If you hadn’t read the previous books you might get lost with the characters and events from the past that are referenced.  It’s not enough of a deal to cause anyone who hasn’t read the rest of the series to feel they can’t read and enjoy this book as a standalone but it would most likely make more sense if one did read the previous books first.Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team