Review: Great paranormal romance!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2013
The Wicked was such a great novella. I'm already a fan of Thea Harrison but this story was an unexpected treat. If you've read previous books in the Elder Race series this book follows what happens to Carling's library on the Other magic island she previously used as a place to get away. Her irreplaceable, magic library is located there and she wants the contents removed. This novella is about the crew who is hired to retrieve those books, specifically Olivia and Sebastian who until the story starts have never met. But when they do, there are fireworks.Olivia is a human witch, who is a librarian/symbologist and she's been hired to help secure the library. Sebastian is a Wyr who is heading up the expedition. He owns a security company and is suffering from a curse that is slowly killing him along with making him go blind, which is especially hard because he is a Wyr bird and flying is obviously important to him. He's a predator owl, which I didn't think would be sexy, but he's an extremely sexy, dominating hero. From the moment Sebastian sees Olivia he's intrigued and after living so many years where he's been bored with his traveling lifestyle at first he tries to convince himself that there's nothing original about her. In fact, I was worried I wouldn't like him because he was thinking how she was just like every other woman, etc. and internally being kind of a jerk. Of course once he started to fall for her, he realized what an idiot he'd been and his possessiveness was hot without being alpha-jerk.Olivia was immediately intrigued by Sebastian at the first meeting and a little intimidated by him when he singled her out to sit with him on their plane ride to San Francisco (to get to the Other island). But she was also very aware of him. The romance between them was incredibly hot and unexpected by both of them, which I think made it even more explosive. There was a bit of suspense in this storyline but it didn't take away from the romance. I think it was the buildup of their relationship and the sweet yet really possessive way Sebastian was with her that was so great. There was this scene on the yacht where he made this `claim' on her in front of everyone else that was just plain hot.I don't want to give away spoilers so I won't delve into the suspense portion, but if you're looking for a bite sized romance that feels like a full length novel, this is a great paranormal read.