Night Embrace, Sherrilyn Kenyon

Book two in the Dark Hunter series finds us with Talon and Sunshine.

Yes, Sunshine. Her brothers are named Storm and Rain. To be fair, their father is a Native American shaman.

Anyway, Talon is our Dark Hunter. He worked with Kyrian to police New Orleans up until Kyrian got his soul back. Talon is an ancient Celtic warrior who pissed off a god of the Gauls. The god cursed him so that every human he loves will die.

The important thing to realize there is that Celtic and Gaulic gods are just as real as Greek gods. I love that. It opens up the storylines - though I'm still not entirely sure where the gods fit in.

Sunshine, as it turns out, is the reincarnation of Talon's long dead wife. They're soulmates.

She's also friends with Selena. Selena, if you remember is best friends with Grace (Fantasy Lover). She and Sunshine share a workplace, of sorts. They each have sidewalk displays, Sunshine for her art, Selena as a psychic.

Beyond the fact that all the pantheons of gods are valid, I liked this one because it doesn't end the same way as Kyrian's story. Kyrian gets his soul back and gets to live his happy human life. I expected the same basic story. Sunshine gets Talon's soul back and they live happily ever after.

Only this vengeful god makes it a little more complicated.

Fantasy Lover, Sherrilyn Kenyon

This is another paranormal romance series. I started it before Christmas - before things got all wonky.

A lot of times when I start these, I've gotten interested by a book later in the series. I see that one, think it looks interesting, and being a little OCD, go find the first of the series and start reading.

This is one of those.

Honestly, if I'd read the back of this one first, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought.

I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it.

So this is a prequel or companion novel to the Dark Hunter series. In it we meet Julian and Grace. Julian is a Greek Demi-god, son of Aphrodite, cursed by his 1/2 brother to be trapped in a book. Whenever someone says his name 3 times (Beetlejuice anyone?), he comes out of the book and must serve the person who called him for a month as a sex slave.

Grace is a straight laced teacher with a still mending heart.

Let's just set aside the whole "sex slave" as entertainment (ours not Grace's) for a second. I'll just say sex trafficking and slavery is very much an ongoing issue and shouldn't be trivialized.

Moving on...

Setting that aside, it was just ok.

Julian's story is heart rending, so that gives it a little help. Just gave it a little more dimension. Grace is strong and smart. If you like romance, I think you'll like this one. For me, I'm just not sure. I enjoyed it, and I'm going to keep on in the series mainly because I don't know where this series will go from here - Dark Hunters weren't even mentioned, so I don't even know what they are. So my curiosity will keep me going, but I think my initial reaction would have been accurate: Not a second thought.

Fantasy Lover, Sherrilyn Kenyon