Review: Darkfever (Fever #1) by Karen Marie Moning

Synopsis (via Goodreads):

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless V'lane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands…

My Thoughts: I was a little hesitant to start this series because there was so much positive buzz that I had a hard time believing it would live up to the hype.  But I decided to throw caution to the wind and read book 1.  How did I feel about it?  I'm going to be honest here, I didn't like Mac.  She's so shallow it's painful.  The way she blunders from one encounter to the next had me cringing.  For Pete's sake!  If you see a monster sucking the life from someone why would you not take a few precautions and not go rushing willy-nilly off and brushing off every offer of help?  *face palm*  While I can chalk part of her ineptitude up to her grief over her sister, part of me wanted to slap her silly and give her a stern talking to.

And then she had her run in with V'lane.  Holy HANNAH!  That guy is hot.  Anyone who can get a girl to drop her panties into the middle of a museum gets a big thumbs up from me.  Now, that's not to say that I found Barrons lacking in the sexy guy department.  I DIDN'T!  Oh, no.  But it wasn't until Mac's encounter with V'lane that my view of her shifted.  WHY DO PEOPLE ALMOST HAVING SEX IN A PUBLIC PLACE MAKE ME LIKE THEM MORE?!?!  I have issues, don't I?

So, V'lane.  Yum.  the downside of V'lane is that we didn't get a lot on him except that he's a sexy sex-fae Prince who likes to get the ladies to toss off their clothes at the drop of a hat.  Which I'm okay with.  And then there's Barrons.  Barrons, Barrons, Barrons.  Now, that's a guy I can get behind.  So to speak.  He's mysterious, sexy as hell and he's got some cool as yet unexplained powers.

Besides the hot man-flesh that graced the pages, I like the world that's been created.  You can practically feel it unraveling under your fingertips.  It's gritty and withered and spreading darkness like a disease.  In short, I LOVE IT!

In case you couldn't figure it out, I liked the book.  Mac still annoyed me at the end, but not as much as before.  I can only hope she grows up a bit under the weight of her responsibilities.  I could also get behind a Mac/V'lane/Barrons threesome.  I'm just saying.

More books by Karen Marie Moning

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