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 this book was seriously demented. And not in a good suspense thriller kind of way, but in a disturbing uncomfortable way.

John Miller is an FBI agent who has taken the undercover case to trap a serial killer. His mission is to attract the attention of the black widow killer named Serena. A woman who marries men and then kills them soon after the wedding. A woman I couldn't help but picture looking like the Debbie from Addams Family Values. Anyway, Johns mission is to marry Debbie... I mean Serena and then expose her when she goes in for the kill. Conflicts arise however when he starts falling for Mariah, the woman Serena has manipulated into thinking she's her BFF.

When I say this book was demented I mean that the characters were all unlikable and the hero's actions throughout the entire book are extremely reprehensible. Mariah is such a flat character. She is a pure victim with nothing about her personality that gives her depth. She's also portrayed as a complete angel. She swoops in and fixes all of John's personal problems, builds homes for the poor, and rescues children from trees. In between her acts of saintly-ness Mariah bemoans the fact that she's divorced and is too tall. All this made her not only a dull character, but also pretty annoying to read about.

For his part, John isn't likable either. His whole role in the book is to complain about how he better not do "insert random action" because it'll hurt Mariah and then he goes and does it anyway. Yes, he's undercover but seriously... [spoiler]

He sleeps with Mariah and then a couple hours later marries Serena.[/spoiler]

Yick, whats worse is that he suffers no real consequences from Mariah for his actions. Mariah instantly forgives John for everything and they essentially confess their undying love for each other.

At the end of this book I was just left squicked out. I had the feeling that Mariah was only with John because she saw someone she could fix and John was just a sad sack who put Mariah on a pedestal. Love with the Proper Stranger has seriously made me leery about picking up a full length novel by Brockmann.

Wow, this was one of the most rushed short stories that I have ever read. Kyle had a lot of things happening here in a very very short time (30 pages) which just did not work for me.

Meg, the heroine, is in the process of fleeing from an abusive situation and Jacob, the hero, is big ole' man-whore who just wants to stick his wick in anything with a hole. They meet, there's an instant attraction, Jacob goes into denial and tries to screw the first available body in an attempt to deny their connection but suddenly develops erectile dysfunction. Meanwhile, Meg finds out that she hasn't covered her tracks enough and her abusers find her. Suddenly, out of no where, Jacob comes to the rescue and has miraculously decided that he wants Meg and only Meg. The abusers meekly leave, but not before revealing to Meg that Jacob nearly humped some dude in the back alley of a bar. Meg (for no reason) comes to terms with this and decides that, despite just getting out of a horrible situation, she wants to be with Jacob even though she knows absolutely nothing about him except that he sleeps around... a lot. Meg and Jacob proceed to hump like bunnies and profess to wanting to spend the rest of their lives together.

Later that same night, while they're napping in post-coital bliss, Meg's abusers break into the house and attempt to kidnap her, which results in Meg and Jacob slaughtering them. And I say slaughter here because there's no real reason given as to why their first and immediate reaction to these guys coming after Meg is to disembowel them. Shoot, they don't even really try to hurt Meg, one of the guys just puts his hand on her shoulder and suddenly he's missing body parts. But anyway, after a handy clean-up of the bodies by a minor character, Meg and Jacob drive into the sunset to live happily ever after. The end.

I think I got some serious whiplash from reading this short story. Primarily because all those events I mentioned occur within a 24 hour time span. This much stuff happening in such a short time did not allow any for much, if any, character develop. So when Jacob was getting ready to ride some guy like a pony behind a bar after developing a connection with Meg, I did not give a fig. I couldn't even muster any sympathy for Meg and her situation. I didn't know enough about these characters to really care at all about what was happening. Why was Meg in such a toxic place in the beginning? Why does she get paid so much money for being an unsuccessful breeder? What kind of culture is she living in and who really holds all the power? etc. etc. All of this just lead to me not believing that Meg and Jacob would work out. I figure that after the initial lust wears off Jacob will go back to man-whoring and Meg will once again find herself in a sucky situation.

Kyle seems to be a hit or miss for me. So while I really did not enjoy this short from her, I'll probably still pick up another book of hers in the future since I have enjoyed some of her other stories.