Dr. Allison Baker has a creepy fixation on one of her coma patients and is disturbed when it's decided that the patient should be taken off life support. Acting like the rational and professional doctor she is, Allison decides to kidnap her coma patient and hide out with him at a cabin in the woods. Luckily for her, Allison's crack-pot idea of how to wake her patient works and he develops a fixation on her.

I clearly have a problem. Every time I pick-up one of these New Species books I know that the main characters and inevitable kidnapping/rape attempt of the heroine is going to annoy the crap out of me... and yet I can't seem to stop reading this series. The writing can get repetitive and Dohner is bad about only telling and not showing, but I can't stop reading these books. This series clearly has some kind of mystical power over me because despite my multiple hang-ups with this installment I'm still looking forward to reading the next one.

Connor Brice, is hellbent on revenge against his half brother, Sir Robert. The first step in his revenge? Steal Sir Robert's fiancee, Adelaide Ward. The fact that Miss Ward is the same woman Connor had been fascinated with, while sitting in prison, is just a bonus. For her part, Adelaide is trapped. She doesn't want to marry the condescending Sir Robert, but her brother's gambling habit has left her with little choice. Its either marry him for his 5,000 pounds a year or go to the poor house. Things begin to spin out of control though when Connor interferes with her plans and Adelaide gets sucked even further into the brothers' revenge schemes.

Johnson has an interesting revenge plot going on here. Connor's drive and focus on gaining vengeance is believable and I agreed that Sir Robert needed to be taken down a peg or two. The guy was horrible. Poor Adelaide just has the misfortune of getting swept up in the tide of their animosity. So then, what was my problem with the story? The elimination of Adelaide's choices and power. Was she given the choice between Sir Robert and Connor? Yes. Is this more than what the typical historical romances with compromised heroines get? Yes. But honestly, she still didn't get to decide. Sir Robert was painted so horribly that Adelaide would've been committing suicide if she chose him.

Adelaide herself was a pretty good HR heroine. She was practical, smart, and didn't take much crap from Connor. Yet she fell into the innocent "I know nothing what-so-ever about sex" trope that I so loathe. Yes, it's so integrated into the genre that it's practically a requirement, but her extreme naivete about sex still annoyed me. I actually ended up skipping the sex scene between Connor and her, because I just wasn't interested in reading another HR deflowering scene where the more experienced hero shows the heroine the ropes.

But I'll admit that most of the issues I had with this book was a "It's me, not you" situation. An Unexpected Gentleman has a wonderful hero and heroine, a fairly original plot, and some great supporting characters. Most of my problems stemmed from the tropes in the genre.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys Elizabeth Hoyt and Lisa Kleypas. Johnson has a writing style that fans of those two authors will enjoy immensely.

Dylan MacLeod is the leader of a clan of dragon shifters. Due to a mysterious disease, members of his clan have been dying. Desperate to save his people, Dylan decides to seek out human aid. His quest leads him to Dr. Phoebe Quillum, who is a researcher looking for a cure to Lupus.

Phoebe is on a tight time constraint to finish her research because the department pulled her budget. While in the middle of searching for additional funding, Phoebe is approached by Dylan. He's willing to pay her 3 million dollars to search for a cure to the disease killing his people. At first Phoebe is hesitant, but the exciting combination of researching a new disease and having enough money afterwards to continue her Lupus research is too much temptation to resist. So, she agrees to Dylan's terms.

Dark Embers was a really difficult book for me to get into. While the main story was interesting, the relationship between Dylan and Phoebe was boring. Those two just didn't have much personality and their background stories were hinted at, but never fleshed out. This made Dylan's reluctance at wanting to keep Phoebe frustrating. Especially, when there was nothing given to show why he was so hesitant. For her part, Phoebe was a fairly interesting character. She was smart with her actions and didn’t let people push her around. However, I didn't appreciate her being punished for having a cool head in dangerous situations. In fact, the climax of the story just pissed me off. Phoebe rationally handles a difficult situation and the characters (Dylan in particular) take it as a huge betrayal. Due to the "betrayal" Dylan punishes Phoebe by throwing a huge man-child tantrum.

This brings me to my biggest problem with the book. The last sex scene is basically a rape scene. Read the following for an explanation of the scene.

Dylan is furious at Phoebe for not telling him of her speculations that another clan was the one killing off his dragons. Her reason for not saying anything is because she first wanted proof before saying anything that might begin a war and put lives at risk. Smart, right? Instead of seeing this as a mature and level-headed thing to do, Dylan flips out. He forcibly drags her to another room, hurting her in the process. Then, upon returning later that night, he finds Phoebe asleep and decides to have sex with her. At first Phoebe is with him, but then she changes her mind because his mood is too violent for her. That’s when this happens,

“For the first time, pain pierced the haze of pleasure that surrounded her, and again Phoebe struggled to get away. But he held her to him, careful not to hurt her despite his violent emotions and the heavy thrusts that brought him fully inside her…. The need to orgasm rose again, sharp, and insistent, and she tried to fight it. She didn’t want it—not like this. Not when Dylan was so angry with her…. But he didn’t give her a choice, and eventually her body betrayed her…. When it was over, he pulled out almost instantly and rolled away from her with a groan. He was asleep within moments, but she spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, tears leaking slowly down her face for all that they had found and lost” (271)

Then, to really drive it home,

“When she finally climbed out of bed the next morning, Phoebe was stiff, uncoordinated. Her body felt used, and not in a good way. She turned on the shower and then stared at herself in the mirror—at the marks Dylan had made on her last night, with his passion and his rage. There was a large bruise on her right shoulder from where he’d bitten her, a scratch on her right hip… Bruises ringed her wrists from where he’d kept her hands pinned against the bed…. She closed her eyes, barely able to look at the destruction- of her body and their relationship.” (272)

And one more disturbing quote about Phoebe’s emotions afterwards,

“…last night hadn’t been about desire or need or love or even hate. It had been about rage, about a fury so deep the only way he could express it was physically.” (272)

This scene completely killed the book for me. The number one thing that I cannot stand in books is rape scenes written under the guise of angry sex. What really infuriates me is that after this, the scene is never brought up again. It happens, the story moves on. What was the point? Dylan's character was just decimated and we're supposed to shrug and move on? I don’t give a flying crap if Dylan later saves Phoebe. I don’t care if he later saves the entire world. It doesn't make up for his abhorrent actions or magically redeem his character. And what about that reaction Phoebe had in the aftermath of that scene? Did she just randomly get over those feelings we saw her expressing about what Dylan just did? She said he had just destroyed their relationship but NOTHING came from it. Honestly, if I hadn’t almost been done with this book, I would’ve put it down after that scene. But since there were about 50 pages left, I chugged on and just ended the book pissed off.

A lot of people have enjoyed Dark Embers book. I can see why, Adams has a smooth writing style and her plot is fairly well fleshed out. But that last 25 percent of the book just killed it for me.

Lothaire has found his Bride, the woman who brings his body back to life and is his destined mate. The problem is that two souls currently inhabit his Bride’s body. One is an evil goddess who lives for blood, violence, and all around nefarious deeds. The other is Ellie, a mortal hillbilly who is content to live-out life on her family’s land. Naturally, Lothaire assumes that his Bride is the evil goddess and begins planning a way to exterminate Ellie’s soul.

After waking up covered in other people’s blood, Ellie decides that the only way to stop the goddess from murdering is to kill the body they share. The problem with this plan is that every time Ellie devises a way to kill herself, Lothaire pops-up out of nowhere to stop her. After one close call, Lothaire decides that the safest place to keep an eye on Ellie is close by. With this in mind, Lothaire hauls Ellie off to his penthouse where she'll be prisoner until he discovers a way to kill her soul, so the goddess can assume total control of the body.

I had some major problems with the way the relationship between Ellie and Lothaire played out. The biggest one was the captive heroine storyline. I don’t usually enjoy stories where the heroines are taken captive by the hero and they fall in love. If done incorrectly (which it typically is) the romance takes on a creepy vibe that makes the relationship seem more like Stockholm syndrome. Despite that, I’ve read a couple captive heroine stories that I’ve enjoyed. This… was not one of those.

After taking Ellie prisoner, Lothaire immediately begins emotionally torturing her. He mocks, he threatens her family, he laughs, they boink, he has a violent episode, he sneers; wash, rinse, repeat until the end of the book. While the emotional torture is going on, Lothaire is also still hunting for an item to kill Ellie’s soul with. Eventually, he begins to realize that Ellie might actually be his Bride, which leads to a few tiny scenes where Lothaire regrets how he’s treated her. However, these moments are over in a blink of the eye and Lothaire immediately goes back to being a douche.So, by the end of the book, I hated his ass. I was actually hoping that Ellie would gain a backbone and run off with a different character.

Yes, Lothaire had some really awful moments in his life and at first I did feel sympathy for what he went through, but as the story progressed (and he just kept getting worse) that sympathy died. He was horrendous to Ellie and he never atoned for his actions. In the final ten pages he finally comes around, but after 300 pages of him being a total dickhead I needed a hell of a lot more from him than what we got.

The saving grace for this book was Cole’s writing style. I love Cole’s use of mythology in this series and I give her huge kudos for writing these books as if all the plots are happening at (or around) the same moment in time. I imagine that takes some serious effort.

If you haven't read any of the other novels in this series, I would not start with this one. I think Lothaire requires more background knowledge (which you gain in the other books) to really appreciate and understand all the events going on in the story. Also, if you didn't like the first book in the series (A Hunger Like No Other) you definately won't like this one as it has a similar vibe going on.

Wow am I glad that I didn't start this series with Hunger Like No Other. The story starts out like a bad 80's bodice ripper. First, the heroine, Emma, is chased through the streets of Paris by a crazy man who captures her; then forces her to strip naked and jack him off in the shower. Crazy man turns out to be our hero Lachlain.

Lachlain has been tortured in the catacombs of Paris by vampires for the past 150 years and, as a result, has a healthy dose of hatred for them. This is bad because his fated mate just happens to be half vampire. So, Lachlain spends most of the book sexually assaulting Emma and being an domineering ass-hat, while Emma plays helpless victim and bemoans her weakness. She does eventually come into her own and kicks some ass but it's not until almost the end of the book.

The thing that ticked me off the most about Hunger Like No Other is that after all the crap Lachlain pulls concerning Emma he never atones for it. Yes, he feels bad, but the only thing he does to make up for being such a douche-bag is to buy her presents. "Hi honey, I'm sorry I sexually assaulted you! Here's a fruit basket? We all good?" 

However, even as Lachlain is trying to "make it up" to Emma for his behavoir he's still keeping her captive and getting her drunk so he can have sex with her again because she keeps turning him down. Uh yeah, that's still not consensual. Seriously, Lachlain just wasn't redeemed in my eyes and Emma's change of heart towards him seemed to come out of no where.

This book really managed to annoy me and the only reason why it didn't score lower is because Cole's writing style is pretty fantastic and funny.