(read: 23/Oct/11)
Night Falls Darkly
What mysteries of
passion are hidden in the past?
Prod dets
The Shadow Guard series, book one
Pub: 2008, (Singet Eclipse) New
American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Author: Kim Lenox
Cat: Paranormal romance (historical)
Format: trade paperback; 311 pp w/ 20
chapters
Whose: Elena & Archer
Age Range: Adult
Synopsis
Ever since an accident took away her
memory, Miss Elena Whitney can’t recall the secrets of her past. All she knows
is that with her mysterious benefactor, Archer, Lord Black, returning to London
at the behest of Queen Victoria, she should seize the chance to get some
answers. But the dangerously handsome Lord Black is not exactly the man Elena
imagined.
Archer, a member of the immortal
Shadow Guards, has been summoned to London to eliminate an exceptionally evil
threat: Jack the Ripper. With his prey brutally killing London’s East End
prostitutes, Archer must stop the Ripper before the murderer’s soul slips
beyond his grasp, and do so while protecting his beautiful young ward, Elena,
whom he spared from death two years earlier. But with a wave of panic spreading
across London, Archer fears that Elena is his weakness—a distraction he can’t
afford, especially since she’s likely to become the Ripper’s next target.
Excerpt
Heat burned Elena’s cheeks. “If you’re
not enjoying yourself, you can go on without me and do whatever it was you had
originally intended.”
She
knew she sounded like a petulant child, but somehow Lord Black had a way of
jabbing at her emotions and making her behave in ways she’d never act
otherwise.
Suddenly
he pulled her against him, so fiercely that her breasts crushed into his chest.
“I
don’t want to go on without you.”
Her
heartbeat raced. Everything she had been feeling—the irritation and impatience—went
into a complete reversal at his touch. He gazed down at her with sensual,
almost intimidating intensity. She still heard the voices of the museum
visitors in the next room.
Lord
Black kept his voice low and discreet. “I want to kiss you. To drag you off
like the cretin you just vilified and ravish you behind that partition.”
There
was an earnest, raw tone to his voice that thrilled her to the core. Gone was
his emotionless facade. Her guidebook fell to the floor, forgotten, as she
grasped his forearms and instinctively leaned into him, boldly matching her
hips against his.
She
gasped as he seized her by the waist.
He
murmured, “Do you see why I have stayed away?”
“So,
you were avoiding me,” she accused softly.
“What
is the alternative?”
She
peered up from beneath the curve of her bonnet. “Kissing me again.”
my Thoughts (review)
First thought: (finally chapters) ha, so.... that’s
it. Really?
ÔÕÖ×Ø
Before we start I must say one
thing: I’m not a fan of historical books, and this is everything. I like
historical crap but I hate reading things that were writing in this time, but
placed back when. I also am not a fan of people taking certain things from
history and putting their own twist on them, when their original story was so
good to begin with.
And this one has both of those
points. So I suggest, well, you should read it yourself if you’re interested in
it to begin with, I may not be flattering to it.
That being said, this is a
supernatural twist to Jack the Ripper. And a romance between a nurse and a
immoral shadow guard.
That part of the story is actually really
nice; I liked the slow work up to the love that had been there since he first
lay eyes on her. I like the fire in the woman and though she knew her place,
and I also liked the supporting characters (that are more than likely the ones
to get their own book)
I also like the idea behind the
whole thing, but didn’t like that they used Jack the Ripper—really, and then
she went and put in Stoker, like this book couldn’t get any more cliché. And to
be honest it was that part that
really broke this book for me, why people feel the need to put them in there, I
have no idea.
The writing style was good, a quick
plot over time, one that got you interested and kept you wanting more (though I’m
sure more so if you were more interested in the genre). I liked that it wasn’t
overly punctuated, and that the slums of England were spoken in that rough
voice, rather than the author just saying they spoke bad.
It really was a nice book, and I
wouldn’t mind trying something else, if she has it, that isn’t a story off
someone else’s story (and I mean, in real life crap) I didn’t like that she
played Jack the Ripper as... well, you’ll see, or you won’t, depending if you
read the book or not.
Series
[this
book], So Still the Night, Darker than Night,
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