There's no secret. . . I love paranormal romance novels. I'm writing a paranormal romance novel. I understand they are silly, cheesy, and implausible. I know that most of them (I'm looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton) fall off the edge into the abyss of bad taste. That's why I like to look for new, fledgling series, where they haven't had time to jump the shark (or perhaps, I should coin a new term, like "fuck the swan king.")
Anyway, since Anita Blake fucked the swan king a long way back, I decided to try out Jeanine Frost's Cat Crawfield series. In the first book, you definitely need to grimace your way past the first several chapters, where the writing and heroine leave a lot to be desired. Cat in naive, and hardheaded. She's a half-vampire, who is taking out her rage on those of her kind by hunting and killing male vampires who believe she's make an easy meal. Cat, needless to say, has some Daddy issues.
And Jeanine Frost clearly has a literary hard on for Spike from Buffy, because her main male character IS Spike. A lean, fiercely jaw boned, British, platinum blonde vampire named Bones. It's both irritating and distracting that she couldn't even disguise the character in the slightest.
Once you make your way past the first few painful chapters, though, you can get into the book a little better. Cat is fighting herself not to fall in love with a creature she was raised to hate, and she also learns how to better combat those very creatures. It's a fun, frivolous book that doesn't overdo it on the sex scenes (though there's a relatively well written one that brought a flush to my cheeks on the bus).
It takes a lot of the annoyance out of reading the Anita Blake series, while maintaining the simpler aspects of the action and the romance. As the book draws to a close you even find yourself hard pressed to put it down.
*** out of *****
3 out of 5
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