Monday 24 October 2011

book review (night falls darkly)

 (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

        A stolen Kiss
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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