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Maddie Temple has put her life back together since the night her father and twin sister died in a car accident when she was a teenager: she's a respected doctor and E.R. specialist and has just started seeing the handsome Jarred Keith. All she needs now is for the nightmares to stop. Nightmares that have her killing another woman, that only become stronger, and start tearing her life apart when she realizes they are not her own. Her sister isn't dead. And that's not the only thing her mother has kept from her. To save her crumbling sanity, Maddie must face her insane sister and the dark secrets of their past and the darker possibilities of their future.

Impression: Dark Legacy was a mixed bag for me. I loved the paranormal/fantasy element, which was what kept me reading; but the romance elements, while they worked most of the time, turned me off when they went to the genre's extremes. I just can't buy that anyone, no matter how much they love someone, will lay there and let that someone stab them with a knife until they are close to death. That's not love/romance, that's stupidity, and I don't care if someone else is possessing the body doing the stabbing. Anyone with common sense and an ounce of survival instinct is going to get out of the way of a knife in the hands of someone who is determined to kill them, possessed or not.

Other than that kind of "romance" extreme (which didn't happen more than once or twice, thank goodness) and the whole idea that falling in love makes a person toss their common sense and ethics out the window, the story was okay. I really liked the use of the tie between the twins and Maddie's need to figure out the mysteries behind her gifts. I did have a problem with Maddie's stubborn determination to see herself as evil, but I can also almost see where it came from and how it would be hard to change those thought processes in just a few days. Outside the romance plot, the story was well-plotted and well written. My issues with characters are generally tied up with the romance elements that didn’t work for me.

So Dark Legacy is a paranormal romance I almost like. If the romance elements had been more realistic for me (and I have to say, at least there was no sense of "Oh my God, my life's in danger, but man you have a cute butte, let's do it!", which would have totally turned me off, so I give the author huge credit there), I would consider the book a really good read. All that being said, I can see how someone who is into paranormal romance (and who doesn't have my issues) would really enjoy Dark Legacy. I can't put the novel into a best reads category, given my issues with it, but I can still highly recommend it to others who like the genre.

amazon / b&n

Amanda is an accountant whose life gets turn upside down when she is kidnapped and awakens to find herself chained to one of the most gorgeous men she has ever seen. Hot and sexy, Kyrian turns out to be a Dark Hunter--an immortal similar to a vampire but who chooses not to drink human blood. Instead, he hunts down the vampires who do, and it's one nasty vamp, Desiderius, that has chained the two of them together and set them loose so he can hunt the Hunter and Amanda. Amanda finds herself attracted to Kyrian in a way she's never been attracted to a man before. Charged with protecting humanity from Desiderius's kind, Kyrian keeps her with him, only to get tangled in an attraction he doesn’t want as he tries finish of Desiderius once and for all--which can only be done if he can regain his soul from Artemus. Determined to defeat Desiderius, Kyrian must face his past, conquer his fears, and trust the woman he loves after centuries of not trusting anyone, and somehow get his soul back from a goddess who is not known for relinquishing what's hers easily.

Impression: As mentioned in my previous review, I'm not big on romance novels. And my biggest problem with the majority of them is how they suppress any common sense in a plot to forward the romance. So even if there's an interesting plot, it gets squashed in the favor of romance/sex even when the romance/sex makes no sense. I was kind of hoping the paranormal stuff would be a little different. If this book is any indication, the only difference is that one or more characters is paranormal--vampire, werewolf, whatever, and that's it. The rest is pretty standard: romance/sex at any cost. You just cannot convince me that a person "running for his/her life" who is getting all hot, hard, and horny for the person running with them is truly afraid that his/her life is truly in danger.

And that happens A LOT in this book. I can get being attracted, and getting hot, hard, and horny when the danger has passed, but while you're fleeing a blood sucking killer? Um, no. I read this book because several people said her writing is wonderful, but the most interesting plot--the cat and mouse between Desiderus and Kyrian--doesn't get the attention it deserves until the later 1/4th or 1/3rd of the book. Before that, it is all backdrop for the relationship developing between Amanda and Kyrian even when the it doesn't make sense. The writing itself was generally okay, except for the constant (and usually unnecessary and annoying) pov switches, but nothing all that "wonderful". All the characters are inhumanly beautiful--tall and elegant, sculpted gods and goddesses. I could probably overlook this if the rest of the book wasn't so flawed, but, in this case, it only made a bad book worse.

I suppose readers of standard, fluff, who-cares-if-the-characters-make-sense romance will love it as long as they also like the paranormal. As for me, it's most definitely NOT on my recommended list. I like fluff as much as the next person (though, admittedly, I do like a little depth to my reading), but my fluff has to make sense.