Darkness Falls by Erin Kellison [Review]

Darkness Falls (Reveler #1) by Erin Kellison
Format: ebook
Source: purchased
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: June 30, 2014

Reveler
1. Darkness Falls - Kindle
2. Lay Me Down
3. Darksider
4. Night's Deep Hush
5. Bring Me a Dream
6. Delirium
7. The Sandman
8. Scrape

Erin Kellison
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Synopsis (Goodreads):

Agent Malcolm Rook is hunting for people with the rarest of talents—the ability to master dreams. He finds the undeniably gifted Jordan Lane, but she’s wary of mysterious Rook and resists his pursuit as long as she can. Yet the dreamwaters they enter are too exhilarating to resist, and attraction soon ignites electric passions. Delving too deep stirs a nightmare, one they must defeat, or be forever lost to darkness.

Fans of paranormal romance and bad boys, get ready for a dark, sexy plunge into fantasy and desire. The Reveler Series is set in a contemporary world in which people can indulge in Rêve, or shared dreaming—a pop culture phenomenon sweeping the world. Imagine being able to fall asleep at night, only to wake in a dream world, one in which you are lucid and in control—where you can be anything you want to be and do anything you like. But you must be careful…dreaming can be as dangerous as it is seductive.

Thoughts on Darkness Falls: I like the idea behind this series A LOT. That said, I thought the ending was incredibly abrupt. Not only in terms of not tying up the overall arc (I'm assuming that carries over into the next book), but in terms of how the relationship between Malcolm and Jordan played out. Everything seemed to be moving forward and working nicely and then, BOOM, they're together and that's that.

Okay, wait. It's not so much that they were together (let's be honest, I expected that), but that we got no closure to Malcolm admitting it. "This is my special lady friend." *end scene* I had to go back and reread the last few pages to see if I'd missed something. For the record, I didn't.

Beyond that, the idea of Reve was fascinating. Shared dreaming, billed as being completely safe and non-addictive, yet with a dark side no one talks about. Malcolm is very predatory in his pursuit of Jordan. He knows her world is going to change the moment she steps into the dreaming and he's not very sympathetic to that at first. As he gets to know her and sees how she got drawn into everything because of her desire to help, he begins to see her in a different light. Still, he's rough around the edges and comes across as hard and tough more often than not.

Meanwhile, I can appreciate Jordan's desire to keep her sister out of trouble, but Maisie made me raise my eyebrows more than once. She's so willfully clueless at times, it hurts. Jordan's life was put in danger because of her. Jordan's entire life is uprooted because of her untruths and the position she'd put herself in. While I'll admit Maisie couldn't have known that Jordan would have drawn the type of interest she did when she stepped into the dreaming, I had a hard time liking her.

(This isn't even Maisie's book and she got more paragraph time in the review than Jordan. Go figure.)

Imaginative and enjoyable (up until the abrupt ending), I'm curious how the overall arc will play out. Something bad is in the dream world and I want to know what it is.