I feel like I'm a little late to this party, but since the challenge doesn't start yet, I'm going to hop right in.  I almost forgot about this reading challenge, and it's entirely possible I missed one of them this year already.  I'm not sure.  Indeed, I've just recently climbed my way out of a massive reading slump that lasted about four months, so it's not like I was really paying much attention to the reading/blogging world.

Anyway, I really do like these mini challenges that only last a month or two, and that aren't exactly hardcore.  Reading a series in a month, with only three books being the minimum requirement is something I'm sure I'll be able to do.

And fortunately for me, there's a particular series I've been telling myself I've been needing to read anyway, and had planned to read since the beginning of September.  In fact, all the books in this series had been an initial selection for another reading game (Halloween Bingo 2018), but due to an ever-changing reading mood, it got pushed back.

But at this point, I'm very willing to make a commitment to make sure I finally get to this series.

With Halloween Bingo coming to a close, I'm feeling a little freer in my book selections, so that helps, too!


The rules are pretty simple:  Read or finish one series in one month.  It can be a series you've already started, but there must be at least 3 published books that you have not yet read.  So if you want to read a trilogy and you haven't started, it'll count.  If you want to read a four book series and you've already read the first book, it'll count, too.

For more information and more answers to questions about the rules, refer to the sign up post link above.

My Series Pick

Completed Reviews: (links will be updated as each book is read)
1.  Midnight Exposure
2.  Midnight Sacrifice
3.  Midnight Betrayal
4.  Midnight Obsession

*Click on series title for GR series page. // Click on book title for my review.

My Backup Series

Ramblings

I don't know if the Midnight series is complete yet, but no new book has been published that I know of.  Hopefully a new book won't suddenly pop up in the middle of November and I can happily breeze through this romantic suspense series without rearranging any of my reading plans.  I'm in the mood for a crime thriller / romantic suspense, so I'm hoping that these books will help.

Meanwhile, I'd also been considering getting Juliet Marillier's Blackthorn & Grim series read, and I've been seeing a lot of good things about this trilogy.  I've had the first two books sitting on my Kindle for some time and was happy when the last book was finally published... then just let all three books sit there for another two years.  So it's time to get to them.  If I have time, I will try to squeeze this one in.  Or, in the worst case scenario, if I end up not really liking Midnight, at least I can fall back on a tried and true author!

Innocent Prey

by Maggie Shayne
Book 3 of Brown and de Luca

About halfway through the book, I sent my BFF a recommendation for this Brown and de Luca series telling her that she really needed to start reading these books.  I think they would be right up her alley with a nice balance of crime thriller to romance, and not too much explicit sex (which would be much more to her liking than any of the other more racy romantic suspense books I've recommended in the past).  There's the blind bulldog, Myrtle, and a lot of family interaction between Rachel, Mason, and the teenagers.

Actually, there are no explicit sex scenes whatsoever in these books, which really dampens the heat level of the book in my personal opinion, but it doesn't usually stop the chemistry between our main couple from being good.  I mean, I don't need sex scenes in my romances to make them good romances, but the relationship between Rachel and Mason so far has been based on some invisible bond the two share that I'm not entirely feeling.  It shows that they work well together, and they banter like the best couple in the world.  We don't really get the explicit sex scenes, but the two talk about screwing like bunnies a lot throughout the book.

But there's still something about their romance that seems to be missing a little bit of sizzle.

And no, I don't mean that the books need sex to spice up the sizzle of the main couple's romance.  I've read plenty of other books where the couple convey a great deal of chemistry without sex sprinkled into the mix.  Heck, I've watched a lot of television series and movies where the couple are completely chaste and still seem to exhibit more chemistry than Rachel and Mason have been projecting since the first book.

I just feel like they're missing something.

But that's beside the point, because I really just LOVE this series for so many other reasons outside of the slightly lukewarm romance.  And I say slightly lukewarm if only because I can see where their romance is a great development.  Rachel and Mason make a great couple!  They're an excellent partnership.  They ARE having sex all the time, and they act so naturally around each other that its wonderful!  Again, I'm just not really feeling the sizzle.

But aside from that and some of the cheesy dialogue at the end of the book (as well as a few little quibbles here and there), this book was damn near perfect.  Okay, maybe it wasn't damn near perfect; I still don't like the switching POV narrations.  But I loved the book and I love how the series is developing from Rachel's connection to other organ donor recipients... to something much bigger and badder.

Her self-named "NFP" powers, the acronyms for "Not Fucking Psychic" powers (**snort**), are taking an interesting direction, and somehow managing to convince me of the connection from other stuff introduced since the first book.  And I'm buying it!

I love that the scope of these books are expanding into other potential directions and possibilities.  I love that we get to continue seeing Rachel's character developing with each book.  She has so far gone from a cynic--even about her own self-help books--to a "maybe I'm starting to believe the bullshit I dish out" type of attitude.  And it's great, because even with that, she still maintains her crass personality, the consistent cussing, and an underlying innocence that probably could only be okay on a thirty-something because of her reborn eyesight.

I enjoyed the premise of the main conflict in this particular book as well, and much more so than the first book; although the second book has a much more intriguing criminal mystery.

As per usual, all the characters are great, even with the introduction of new characters, and more book time by recurring characters.

And then there's the snark and the awesome that is Rachel de Luca.  I mean, sure, she goes a little overboard in her mind meanderings throughout the narration sometimes, but I've come to expect it and I love her all the same.  Myrtle is awesome!  The kids are cute.  Mason could use a little more tweaking because he's coming off as Mr. Perfect with the proper romance novel hero flaws--he had so much more depth to his personality throughout the first two books, and he kind of fades into the background in this one.

And I also miss Amy, Rachel's assistant who doesn't really make an appearance at all in this third book.


But mainly, I just loved reading this.  A lot.


***

2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• COYER Summer Vacation 2016 -- Bingo Board Three | Square C1 -- Paranormal
• Can You Read a Series in a Month? Challenge

Deadly Obsession

by Maggie Shayne
Book 4 of Brown and de Luca


Pretty much binge-read entire series for Can You Read a Series in a Month? Challenge.  But considering that it was only four books of less than 400 pages each plus one novella, it wasn't much since I average more books than that monthly.  But this series was pretty awesome, so I'm not complaining or anything... except that I am because author Maggie Shayne has stated that there will be a new installment of the Brown and de Luca series that is supposed to be out this year, but I've seen no peep of any such thing yet.

Anyway, this series was awesome (as I already said).  I don't know if I liked this fourth book more than the third book, but the romantic chemistry between Rachel and Mason was definitely MUCH better than the previous.  The plot was less of a mystery and more of a suspense and crime thriller since the culprit is revealed at the beginning anyway, but there was plenty excitement had by all.

And Rachel's snark as well as Myrtle's awesome dogginess is definitely a bonus!


Proper full review to come!  And the rest of the reviews for the other books in this series will be posted soon, too!


***

2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• COYER Summer Vacation 2016 -- Bingo Board Three | Square R10 -- Thriller
• Can You Read a Series in a Month? Challenge

Wake to Darkness

by Maggie Shayne
Book 2 of Brown and de Luca

Wake to Darkness definitely has more suspense than the first book in this series, as well as a very intriguing murder mystery to go with it.  Sleep with the Lights On was all kinds of creepy and exciting and fun; but if I'm honest with myself, I really DID enjoy this second book a little bit more than the first.  And I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that we already know our protagonists and have a grasp on the kind of characters they are.

This Brown and de Luca series is just the right amount of series-format plus stand-alone installments to keep a reader hooked, while at the same time giving us new material to enjoy per each book.

Anyway...

Wake to Darkness employs one of my more favorite plot devices, as the blurb states, stranding our heroes on a mountain in the dead of a wintery snow storm.  Of course, I hadn't quite expected the Snowbound device to be executed the way it had been presented, and unfortunately, I didn't take to it as well as I would have in other cases.  I'm not entirely sure I'm a hundred percent behind the fact that Mason chooses to take his entire family on a vacation when there's a killer out there hunting them--and to bring them to a resort where there are lots of other people, innocently trying to enjoy their own holiday vacation as well...

Of course, setting that little quibble aside, the rest of the book was fueled with suspense and that same eerie intrigue that comes with an exciting murder mystery and more of Rachel's "woo-woo" paranormal stuff.  The fact that we put a new spin on the organ donation angle carried over from the first book made for a great premise to follow:

Rather than Mason's brother killing from the grave using the evil within his donated organs (which I'm still a little iffy about THAT particular concept, with the "cellular consciousness" thing also carrying an evil gene, or something like that), the recipients of the donated organs, instead, are the murder victims as someone is running around hunting and removing said organs.  Instead of seeing the murders take place from the eyes of the murderer, Rachel's connection to the organ donation recipients forces her mind into the bodies of these people as they are being murdered.

The creepy factor is WAY up there this time!  O.o

When the finale rolls around, however, the first book and the second book collide, and the reasoning behind all the killings make a whole lot more sense--without that iffier premise from the first book, the killings from the second book would have had to have been way different.

And you know what?  I really DO appreciate how both books are stand alone mysteries, and yet the premises come together in the bigger picture of the long run.  It makes me wonder how the rest of the books in the series will give us newer, fresher cases to follow while at the same time referring excellently back to actions and events from the previous books.

As I did for the first book and the novella, I immensely loved Rachel and all the characters, some more than others and some less than others.  Rachel and Mason make a great team as partners in investigation, with Mason's police detective skills and Rachel's "uncanny sense of perception" that she had developed during her twenty years of being blind.  I DO love Rachel's sense of sarcasm, although I feel like she got a bit exhausting with some of her "Inner Bitch to Self" conversations inside her head--it was cute the first few times, but after a while it started getting a little old.  Nonetheless, I still loved following her narration a lot.

The romance was not as satisfying as I would have liked, if only because our main couple are great together as an investigating partnership, but have yet to really exhibit any kind of emotional or physical chemistry despite the blazing lust generating off of the two in spades.  I just can't seem to connect the romance, and I find the sudden inner monologue declarations of love a little premature.  Their chemistry was better in this second book, but still not to the level I would have liked, so I'm hoping to see more from them in the romance arena in the next book since they all but declared themselves to each other, even if not in so many words.

Of course, there still wasn't a clear conclusion to the romance by the end of the book.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to mention was the murder mystery, because I really DID enjoy this one and loved the premise to death.  A serial killer taking out all the recipients of Eric Brown's donated organs?  My only spoiler sport attitude about that was: How did the killer know which victims to target, because all of this information should be of the utmost confidential kind?  Even the police had to go through a lot of red tape and paperwork just to get an okay to view that information.

Otherwise, it was definitely an intriguing premise, even if not executed in the best of ways.

I kind of figured out who the killer was after Rachel was attacked the first time.  It was kind of a given and made the most sense to me, even if it didn't really.  If that makes any sense to anyone else at all.

Wake to Darkness was lots of fun and excitement.  And then there was also Myrtle, the blind bulldog Rachel adopted from the first book--such an adorable and awesome little mascot for these books!


***

2016 Reading Challenges:

• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• COYER Summer Vacation 2016 -- Bingo Board Three | Square C6 -- Romance
• Can You Read a Series in a Month? Challenge

I think I've done a similar series challenge in the past, but it was a full-year challenge and you could choose as many series as you wanted to read.  And it also required at least 5 books published and unread to count.

Michelle and Berls are hosting this challenge as a month-long challenge starting August 1 this year--that's about two weeks from now.  Since I have an extremely long list of series that I either want to read or have already started reading, I figured this would be a nice way to get through some of them.

Of course, even as I want to try finishing some series I've already started, it looks like I've simply decided to pick brand new series.  One of the books chosen is part of my 2016 Reading Assignment Challenge, though...

The rules are pretty simple:  Reading or finish one series in the month of August.  It can be a series you've already started, but there must be at least 3 published books that you have not yet read.  So if you want to read a trilogy and you haven't started, it'll count.  If you want to read a four book series and you've already read the first book, it'll count, too.

For more information and more answers to questions about the rules, go to the sign up post above.

My Series Pick

My Backup Series

Ramblings

I'm very much looking forward to reading the Brown and de Luca series because the concept reminds me of the movie The Eye, but with some differences, of course.  I really liked the movie--I only watched the 2002 HK version that I have linked and not the 2008 Jessica Alba version--so I've been very curious about this book when I first read the summary.  However, just in case I end up not liking the series, I've chosen a backup.  I've read good things about Maggie Shayne, but one can never be too careful.

I've also been looking forward to reading something else by Kylie Brant, so maybe if I can finish my main series pick, I can jump into my backup series as well.