Fever Series: Darkfever

Oh my stars. Wow. I loved this book to pieces! It was absolutely flippin' amazing. I cannot even begin to tell you how good this book is! Ms Moning is an evil genius. Even though most of the characters kinda pissed me off, I couldn't stop reading. As soon as I even thought about taking a little break from this book, just to catch my breath, this little voice in my head would scream, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!?!" 

I had to know what was going to happen next.

The story is told from the perspective of MacKayla Lane. She is a girly girl who lives in a small town in Georgia. She is pretty happy with her lot in life. She is super-cute, she has parents who adore her, and she and her sister are thisclose. But then things start to go badly awry. Her sister goes to Dublin to study and she dies there under mysterious circumstances. The police close the investigation due to a lack of new evidence. Mac's whole world falls apart, so she goes to Dublin to put pressure on the police to continue their investigation. 

This is where things start getting weird. Mac meets the mysterious, arrogant, condescending and sarcastic Jericho Barrons and starts to see the Fae. The fae are uber creepy. They are not at all like Disney's Tinkerbell would like you to believe. And Barrons, while smoking hot, is a jerk. I really did not like this man. He was so mean to Mac that I often found myself yelling at my book (don't look at me like that! I know I'm not the only one who does stuff like that). I just want to give you a few examples of why I was acting like a crazy.

His gaze dropped from my face to my toes and back again. Apparently unimpressed by what he saw. "Go home, Ms Lane. Be young. Be pretty. Get married. Have babies. Grow old with your pretty husband."

Condescending, much?!

Mac has long, pretty blonde hair which she loves. For her own safety though, she has to dye it and cut it short. Being attached to my own hair, I wanted to slap Barrons for this.

"When you've finished cutting and coloring your hair, return to me. Short and dark, Ms Lane. Lose the Barbie look."

He gave me a brief glance. "Go put on something more... womanly. 

My eyes narrowed. "You mean sleazy."

"I mean the kind of woman others are accustomed to seeing me with. A grown one, if you think you can manage that, Ms Lane. Black might make you look old enough to drive. The new hair is... better. But do something with it. Make it look like the night I woke you."

All I can say here is grrr...

Normally this type of, ahem, "hero" is the kind I rail against. And I still do. I wanted to hit him upside the head with a rock and that is still one of the kinder things I wanted to do to him. But even his general asshole-ishness kept me reading. I kept hoping that something would happen to soften him, or at least make him a teeny tiny bit nicer. And eventually, halle-freaking-lujah, it did. On page 332, the last chapter. Mac managed to talk Barrons into painting her nails since she couldn't. It doesn't change the fact that he's a creep but it does make him a little bit more human. 

Now, lets talk about Mac. She's normally the type of heroine that I wouldn't have patience for. Too much love for pink, too concerned about clothes and looking pretty, too little kick ass potential. Boy, was I wrong. I found that the meaner Barrons was to Mac, the more I liked her. She reminded me a little bit of Sookie Stackhouse in the beginning. You know, carrying on oblivious to all the freaky stuff around her and then being thrown in at the deep end. Whenever Mac managed to overcome some obstacle or managed to put Barrons in his place, the latter didn't happen too often, I did a little victory dance for her. What I also liked about Mac was that she didn't just jump into bed with Barrons. Not once in the entire book was there any sexy time with Barrons. Yes, she was definitely thinking about it. But because he was so deeply unpleasant, she knew going there would be a very bad idea. 

There weren't a whole lot of peripheral characters. We've met V'lane and Fiona. V'lane is a death-by-sex Fae. He is basically so inhumanly beautiful, and oozes these "jump-my-bones" pheromones, that humans can't resist him. I don't like him. He gives me the creeps. Fiona is Barrons' squeeze. She does not like Mac, not even a little. She has a bad case of the "love-is-blinds" for Barrons.  

I loved this book so much! I wish that I could read it again and get that feeling that you get the first time you read an amazing book. Yes, I know I ranted about Barrons but I'm halfway through the second book (Bloodfever) and he does get better. Slightly.

Seriously, if you read anything else this year, read this book!

And then read the rest of the series!