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A review by lcmarie19
The Darkest Touch by Gena Showalter
4.0
RATING: 3.5 stars
*This book was given to me by the publisher in exchange for my honest review**
It was slightly above an average read for me. This was the first book I've ever read by Gena Showalter and it's the eleventh book in a series. I wasn't aware of that when I given the book. With that being said, you can still read it as a standalone, but there is a bit of a backstory (with the secondary characters, as well as the main ones) that you will miss. It won't take away from the story being told, but having the background knowledge probably would have made the story a bit better.
Our main characters, Torin and Keeley, are honest a big lustful ball of foreplay. Torin is a fierce immortal warrior, who was cursed to host the demon called Disease. Bascially anyone he touches gets infected with sickness and death. That made for a very interesting premise for me, especially knowing that this was a paranormal romance. Keeley is the Red Queen, she's a powerful beauty warrior herself, that quite frankly, annoyed me to no end.
Torin and Keeley were on a mission to find a cure for Torin's predicament, as well as reunite with his friends. While the plot isn't original, it was very interesting. BUT the only thing that really kept me from enjoy the progression to the fullest was the first 100+ pages of fighting being used as foreplay between Torin and Keeley. It was cute intially, but it grew older and older as the story progressed. It just didn't feel like it needed to last that long. I was more interested in a lot of secondary characters, while this foreplay was happening. So it was a bit distracting. The bickering back and forth was another overused form of foreplay that, while dialogue is always key for me to really enjoy a book. I just felt like more could have been done with the chemistry between these two. I didn't feel it. Not at the beginning.
The world in the book is very vast. Very intricated. And sometimes very overwhelming, but there are appearance of characters that I'm familiar with in general, like Hades and Lucifer. I enjoyed learning about the world from this particular read, but it's also another one of those times where reading previous books would have come in handy.
So, in order for me to really get the most out of this read, I had to pay close attention to the characters. Torin's character was probably my favorite, but even he got on my nerves at times. He tended to be quite wishy-washy when it came to Keeley, and to some extent I understood. But around 70-80% through the book, I felt like it had gotten old.
The resolution of the plot was okay. Wasn't anything that surprised me, but it wasn't anything that I disliked. I do feel like it could have been solved in a shorter amount of pages (all of that fighting and bickering foreplay took up a lot of plot progression space).
I rated this story the way that I did BECAUSE I feel like there's potential for more. Plus I am intrigued and I would really like to go back and read more of the series to get to know more of the characters. Also, I loved the world, I just feel like I didn't get the most of it because I read book eleven before books one through ten.
For what it was, the book was good. But I have read similar books that I have done it slightly better. I do recommend the read, if for the fantastic world alone.
*This book was given to me by the publisher in exchange for my honest review**
It was slightly above an average read for me. This was the first book I've ever read by Gena Showalter and it's the eleventh book in a series. I wasn't aware of that when I given the book. With that being said, you can still read it as a standalone, but there is a bit of a backstory (with the secondary characters, as well as the main ones) that you will miss. It won't take away from the story being told, but having the background knowledge probably would have made the story a bit better.
Our main characters, Torin and Keeley, are honest a big lustful ball of foreplay. Torin is a fierce immortal warrior, who was cursed to host the demon called Disease. Bascially anyone he touches gets infected with sickness and death. That made for a very interesting premise for me, especially knowing that this was a paranormal romance. Keeley is the Red Queen, she's a powerful beauty warrior herself, that quite frankly, annoyed me to no end.
Torin and Keeley were on a mission to find a cure for Torin's predicament, as well as reunite with his friends. While the plot isn't original, it was very interesting. BUT the only thing that really kept me from enjoy the progression to the fullest was the first 100+ pages of fighting being used as foreplay between Torin and Keeley. It was cute intially, but it grew older and older as the story progressed. It just didn't feel like it needed to last that long. I was more interested in a lot of secondary characters, while this foreplay was happening. So it was a bit distracting. The bickering back and forth was another overused form of foreplay that, while dialogue is always key for me to really enjoy a book. I just felt like more could have been done with the chemistry between these two. I didn't feel it. Not at the beginning.
The world in the book is very vast. Very intricated. And sometimes very overwhelming, but there are appearance of characters that I'm familiar with in general, like Hades and Lucifer. I enjoyed learning about the world from this particular read, but it's also another one of those times where reading previous books would have come in handy.
So, in order for me to really get the most out of this read, I had to pay close attention to the characters. Torin's character was probably my favorite, but even he got on my nerves at times. He tended to be quite wishy-washy when it came to Keeley, and to some extent I understood. But around 70-80% through the book, I felt like it had gotten old.
The resolution of the plot was okay. Wasn't anything that surprised me, but it wasn't anything that I disliked. I do feel like it could have been solved in a shorter amount of pages (all of that fighting and bickering foreplay took up a lot of plot progression space).
I rated this story the way that I did BECAUSE I feel like there's potential for more. Plus I am intrigued and I would really like to go back and read more of the series to get to know more of the characters. Also, I loved the world, I just feel like I didn't get the most of it because I read book eleven before books one through ten.
For what it was, the book was good. But I have read similar books that I have done it slightly better. I do recommend the read, if for the fantastic world alone.