Karen Marie Moning – Dreamfever

Dreamfever is the fourth book in the Fever Series; by this point we have learned a lot about our main characters and have many satellite characters to keep the story interesting.

Karen does a good job of catching the reader back up with each book. As I have alluded to before, maybe she does too good a job because I think the reader could start with this book, book four and be caught up with the main story line. Each previous book is filled with a lot of details and are good books to read if you like paranormal urban fantasy with a touch of romance. I realize that by not reading the other three books those details would be missed but all the main interactions and adventures are referred to in this book. This is also the first book to delve more into romance. These aren’t the descriptive love scenes that you would find in an erotic romance novel but there is some heat.

It begins with the main character, MacKayla (Mac) Lane, in the same horrible predicament she was in when we left her at the end of book three. Mac was all alone and being driven out of her mind, by the horseman of the Apocalypse.  The evil Darroc having sent them to capture her, she is rescued and then must undergo treatment to return from madness. Jericho Barrons aids her in her recovery from the dreamfever she is in; he has been her mentor since realizing that she wasn’t just your average girl from the states. The twists and turns continue on as she has some interactions with her own kind and learns some riveting information from the past. Karen M. Moning leaves us with Mac alone again her bad luck seemingly endless.

I love to hate and hate to love Jericho Barrons. I want him to just hold Mac sometimes and let her feel safe in his arms but I get his tough love approach, he is trying to make her the best Mac she can be and teach her that she shouldn’t ever rely on others. He is trying to turn her into a self-sufficient warrior, fully capable of making the hard decisions. I also think I like Mac now better than I liked the Mac from book one. She has grown up a lot but she still has an uncanny ability to walk right into disaster.

I am getting tired of all the cliffhanger endings though. Recently at a book signing I attended, Karen M. Moning indicated she did not write the books the readers wanted but she wrote the books that came to her. So, I guess I will just have to suffer through cliffhangers if that’s how they come to her.   But I don’t know how many more poor Mac can survive.

Karen Marie Moning -Faefever

Faefever is book three in the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning.

Karen starts Faefever with a small prologue recapping what has happen so far and then Mac, MacKayla Lane is dumped right back into the place she was when the last book ended. As always there is several life changing events for Mac. Life changing revelations about other characters and some revelations she wished she would learn, just like in the last book Bloodfever and in Darkfever before that. Mac wants to know all the things about people that you and I don’t want to.  Mac’s relationships with her own kind are focused on in Faefever. Unlike Mac, I don’t trust any new characters that come along in these books but she decides to give it a shot and trust a stranger or two. Everyone she has met so far has kept secrets from her but she desperately needs a friend and misses her sister severely.

She is still residing at the bookstore and is working the cash register for a while but with all that is going on in her world it seems useless to try to maintain normal. She discovers some of her enemies are now working together but she makes an Allie out of another. Jericho Barrons, her employer, is still helping her to survive but that’s it. She is useful to him and he wants her alive. Mac has the same deal going on with V’lane a prince but she doesn’t really trust either one. Even though her lust for Barrons continues to grow she makes no attempt to act on it for fear of whom he really is. At least V’lane is honest about being a devil, he causes her lust too but not in quite the same way.

Faefever sticks to the genres of Paranormal, Mystery and Fantasy. I think a person could start this series with this novel and still be able to understand what is going on. Again I realize that two books full of character interactions and adventures would be missed but the major ones are all alluded to in this book.

I enjoyed the part of the book where Mac went out with the young girl Dani, to cleanup the streets. She is finally putting on her big girl pants and doing something to make her life better. Instead of dressing like a walking rainbow and trying to pretend everything can be normal again. For God’s Sake, her boss is some kind of monster that keeps all the dark things at bay, nothing will be normal again.

I didn’t like the way this book ended. Poor Mac has finally started to fight hard and not be so immature to only have such a despicable thing happen to her. Circumstantially finding herself alone in her world, left with the wolves, to fend for herself. It just isn’t fair but whenever is life fair. Mac has about the worse luck I could imagine a person having.

 

Karen Marie Moning – Bloodfever

Bloodfever is the second book in the Fever Series by Karen M. Moning; also know as a MacKayla Lane Novel.

Like its predecessor, Darkfever, you will have to continue reading the series to see what happens to the characters. But I don’t think reading Darkfever is necessarily a requirement before reading this book. Yes, it will give you more in depth knowledge of the characters and you would miss some adventures but the big ones are alluded to in this book. So for you out there who like to skip ahead for just the meat and potatoes, leaving the appetizers sitting cold in the kitchen, starting at Bloodfever will get you the gist. I read both books.

There are a couple almost “romantic” scenes in this book but nothing out of a romance novel. This book definitely focuses more on the paranormal mystery than romance. It starts with poor MacKayla (Mac) Lane being battered and bruised from her last adventure in the previous MacKayla Lane Novel, Darkfever. Jericho Barrions had came to her rescue and been amazed at how well she had done on her own.  She had hoped that their adventure had not only provided them with good intel but also left an enemy dead.  With so many enemies it would be nice if she had one less to worry about.

Mac is haunted by her demons but aren’t we all, at one time or another.  The difference is hers might kill her if she doesn’t get them in check.  With new players emerging and others dying it’s hard to determine which characters are the good guys. But so is the way of life. Anyone could betray you at any time if something better comes along.

I feel for Mac as her world just keeps changing around her and she has no way to control it.  She feels alone and stuck. Everyone wants her but nobody is willing to take her as she is. They all want her to fit inside the pretty little box they have chosen for her.  Slowly she is becoming her own women though.

She still hasn’t decided if she trusts Barrons but Mac calls on him every time trouble finds her, Barrons being the lesser of the evils surrounding her. Towards the end she thinks she has finally figured out what makes him so special but then changes her mind. Karen leaves us with Mac alone learning that maybe Barrons had been right about a few things. Personally, I really want to like Barrons and I really want him to be the hero but I just don’t know.

Karen Marie Moning – Darkfever

Karen Marie Moning – Darkfever is book one in her multi named series.

Darkfever is different than the books I have been reading. After reading the Prologue I thought that I wasn’t going to take this book seriously but I gave it a chance and continued reading. I’m glad I did. The beginning was normal and just like any other book. Then when the character MacKayla (Mac) Lane gets to Dublin the book takes a different turn. You follow Mac down the rabbit hole as she disappears into a world she never dreamed existed as she retraces her sister Alina’s footsteps.

In Dublin at a bar Mac starts having strange hallucinations and is attacked by a strange old woman. She ends up getting lost in Dublin and finds herself in an abandoned part of the city. She stumbles upon a brightly lite bookstore and calls herself a cab. After her string of questions alarms the cashier Mac meets the owner, Jericho Barrons. It almost seems that Barrons is going to hold her there until she tells him everything she knows but her cab arrives to save her.

Mac inevitably has another hallucination or so she thinks that’s what they are and runs terrified to Barrons’ bookstore. He feeds her an unbelievable story about what she saw and moves her from her hotel to his residence, which is part of the bookstore. Mac is lost she doesn’t know what is happening to her, she doesn’t know if she can trust Barrons or if he is even telling her the truth. She talks herself out of believing the things she sees right before her eyes, even after touching one of her hallucinations with her own hands.

Karen M. Moning continues to take us further into Barron’s world, dragging Mac further down into this strange reality that she doesn’t want to be apart of. We learn more about the hallucination that aren’t really hallucinations and about how Mac and Barrons are part a small group of humans that have them. The book ends after a horrifying revelation is made. Leaving us to read the next book in the series if we are to ever find out what happens to Mac. So I advise the reader of Darkfever to be prepared to read the next book in the series.

As I read I kept hoping that Barrons would become the hero I needed him to be and towards the end he began to fulfill my wish. Surprisingly Mac almost didn’t need him, she was becoming her own hero till her ego lead her to make a mistake she couldn’t save herself from. Mac’s journey from Barbie to Barbarian is a believable one. She struggles immensely emotionally just like you or I would. Barrons is a mysterious man who is well guarded and keeps his secrets close. Only occasionally letting Mac learn something about him. He evades her questions with more questions. So for as much as I want to like him I am afraid he is one of the bad guys.

2015 Year of Books

This is a pictorial list of the books I read in 2015.  Reviews for most of them can be found under the My Reviews section. I have 61 on here not to bad, I have a few I started but haven’t finished they will get counted when completed.