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Awaken Me Darkly
by
Gena Showalter
paranormal romance in a paperback edition that was published by Downtown Press on March 1, 2006 and has 306 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include The Darkest Night, The Darkest Kiss
First in the Alien Huntress paranormal romance series. It will definitely be my last in this series.
My Take
This could be a good story if Showalter had taken the time to develop it. As it is, the “leaps of intuition” and the inner dialog are embarrassingly lame, and I cringed as I read through this really bad space opera.
Fortunately, Mia and Dallas are cynical enough that they suspect Lilla en Aar and the policeman who arrested her so they have lots to do that first night. Now if Lilla only had some realistic dialog and George Hudson weren’t so obviously an idiot. If life worked this way in the real world we wouldn’t have a lot of criminals skating about.
Yeah, Mia may be kick-ass, but she can be stupider than *ahem*. She’s a lousy interrogator and it takes her how many pages to figure out that the central theme is fertility?? Then when Kyrin kidnaps her . . . oh brother.
“The hem of my black leather jacket danced around my calves.” If she’s wearing a jacket and its hem is down to her calves, she is short or she had taken it off and tied the sleeves around her waist.
It “just happens” that hair follicles are found at each crime scene that pinpoint the murderer?
Then we meet Kyrin en Aar, Lilla’s brother who is obsessed with Mia. Leaping into her vicinity with no finesse whatsoever and quickly eliciting a lustful reaction from her…yawn… Then we get to meet Howdy Doody…oops, I mean the steely-eyed sex club owner, Mark St. John.
We finally get to the sex part when Kyrin kidnaps Mia out of AIR headquarters when he strips her and dresses her in one of garments worn by women from his planet and ties her to the bed…double yawn…
I’m sorry, Showalter is [not] trying so hard to create some tension [of any sort] and I’m just not feeling it as she has Mia fighting with Kyrin about his keeping her prisoner, telling her that there are things he can’t tell her because she is not yet ready to hear it. So naturally, he gives in and tells her. She rages off with completely unbelievable reactions. Okay, I might believe them if she were, oh, 16 instead of 28.
About the only positive I find in this story are the interactions between Mia and her team. The dialog is realistic and showcases their camaraderie. If only I didn’t have to read the bits in between . . .
Oh look, just read this at your own risk . . .
The Story
Mia Snow has been called out to a homicide. A man, William Steele, has been found nude in a dicey neighborhood and it’s only luck that Mia and Dallas each find a clue that narrows the list of suspects down. All on that list are aliens, which confirms that their unit, AIR, is in charge.
The team members of AIR are hoping this isn’t a serial killer as Steele is the fifth man who’s been snatched in the Chicago area although he is the first to turn up dead. Their boss, Jack Pagosa, gives them til morning to solve it . . . oh, really . . . well, that is just so realistic.
The Characters
A.I.R. is short for Alien Investigation and Removal. A branch of law enforcement tasked with hunting down and executing aliens who have broken human laws. Sounds rather like Anita Blake.
The Cover
The cover is very sexy with its deep royal cast and the sexy woman in her black patent leather bustier. I think she must have wandered over from another story because there aren’t any women in bustiers in this one . . .
