Nocturnal Book Reviews

(minor spoilers ahead)

Before I start venting, please bear in mind that I rarely find paranormal romance as satisfying as urban fantasy, so I am biased. Plenty of people will love this book. So read it and judge for yourself.

First of all, I love this cover much more that the first. It has more connection to the plot than the first book. It is an interesting book, but the world-building and humor I admired in the first installment are virtually non-existent. This is a straightforward paranormal romance.

Drake, a mysterious male character from the book #1 becomes a typical "oh, how can I live my life without this woman" man when he gets an order of protection on Toni Tutoro, Fledgling vampire who was exiled from Chicago.

Toni is supposed to be a strong female character but we know all this from the words of secondary characters. She is just not allowed to show her strength in this book. Yes, she is super nice to everyone, keeps saying sorry, cries and gives hugs, but most of the time she goes with the flow.

There was a moment in the book when Toni was left on her own to lead an investigation into an illegal appearance of werewolves in Chicago. It would really have shown her potential. But no. Magically her long lost brother appears out of nowhere and practically takes charge.

Why? There are many paranormal romances where the female protagonist is strong, and I absolutely love them. Take Alexandra from If Angels Burn by Lynn Viehl or Elena from Angel's Blood by Nalini Singh, - their strength and resistance to the male character are spicing everything up. But again this is just my personal preference :)

One secondary character who I found creepily intriguing was Oktober - a vampire who could manipulate emotions of everyone around him and who could literally eat people. He was the essential bad ass. However, I've got a suspicion that the next book with him as the main character will turn him into everything that noble and good and woefully misunderstood.

One of the reasons why I admire the author is that Jennifer Turner doesn't shy away from showing us true evil. Toni goes through this huge tragedy of what happened to her family. We see her enemy Natasha Stryker being as vile as you can get, and it feels real, not one dimentional. You want the evil punished, the villains stopped.

Like I said, Jennifer Turner has got serious potential and I really liked the books; they kept me hooked, however the issues I had with them prevented me from awarding the books with higher marks.